Team Fortress 2 is Weird
by I've no clue what I am doing
Summary: Pyrovision goggles. What's up with that? What's up with everything? This is a collection of silly stories (one for each class) written on a whim. (Yes, each one. Each receives exactly one whim from me.) Review only if you must. (On the other hand, please inform me if I have attached the incorrect rating or made grammatical or stylistic errors, with as much profanity as you like.)
1. Pyro's Pyrovision

Author's Note: Thank you for clicking on this link, whatever your reasons may be. So "real books" written by "real authors" have author's notes too, but they're called "introductions" or "prefaces". Screw that. This was a story written in 45 minutes posted on the request of my brother. Okay? So, don't forget to flame- I mean review and stuff or something like that. Actually, you know what, don't bother. You probably have better things to do.

OhrightandIownnothingdon'tsueme

* * *

 **Pyro's Pyrovision**

The entire RED team was bruised, battered, and very satisfied. The BLUs weren't any more incompetent than usual, but due to the BLU Soldier's temporary bout of insanity, they were (and by that, they meant Spy was) able to convince him that he was, in fact, a unicorn from Sugarlandia, and he was terribly, terribly lost. The hapless Soldier promptly rocket jumped away, shouting something about being the protecting the other unicorns from communist pegasi, blowing apart three of his teammates and leaving the rest in his (proverbial and literal) dust. Having lost one of their main sources of brutal, mindless firepower, they were easy pickings. Even more than usual.

Surveying the carnage with some pride, the team began sifting through the debris, salvaging all the spare ammunition and weapon materials they could. The Pyro sat down, cross-legged, in front of a pile of smouldering ash. A few stray embers, still glowing faintly, were scattered around the gray mound. They tilted their head curiously. "Mmph mrph!" they exclaimed happily. They picked up a nearby stick and began to stoke the yet-nonexistent flames, humming merrily.

The Engineer knelt forty yards away, packing away the rest of his equipment. He looked at the Pyro, who was...playing with a charred femur? Pyro had roasted the enemy Sniper to oblivion earlier, and had just now picked out several bones from the blackened skeleton. They appeared to be stoking a fire with the fibula whilst acting out a pantomime in which the femur was a horse and the mandible was its rider. He wondered what the...fire...enthusiast could possibly be thinking, as a drunk and slurring Demoman wandered too close to the newly roaring blaze and set his own trousers on fire. Demo yelped, hopping from foot to foot, finally losing what little balance he had and falling face first into the flames. Pyro squealed in glee, their expression obscured by their mask, clapping enthusiastically.

Engineer winced in sympathy. Medic would fix the burns, sure, but the Pyro's mind was another thing entirely.

An idea struck him, and he grinned.

Later on, back at base, they were gathered in the mess hall. Pyro had, as per custom, coaxed another chair into flames, bathing the entire room in firelight.

"Did you guys see that? Those BLU scumbags didn't know what..." the Scout babbled on. "You guys are lucky I was there to save all your -"

"Shut mouth, baby man." Scout opened his mouth to protest, but the Heavy somehow looked much more intimidating than usual. Maybe it was the gruffness of his response. Maybe it was his air of stoic solemnity. Maybe it was the legless, armless BLU Scout with gaping, fist-sized holes on his bleeding torso that Heavy was holding by the head. (It was probably the solemnity thing.)

"Vat do you think that Engineer called all of us here for?" asked Medic, holding the head of a BLU Spy. "I hope he know he's interrupting precious vivi- ahem, dissection time. I specifically state zat I had ordered a new set of baboon organs and they are all going to spoil!"

"Is okay, Doktor. Leetle Engie man not stupid time-waster like Scoot. Probably something important."

"Why would you even bring that in here?" mumbled the Scout, still staring at his dismembered counterpart. He was summarily ignored.

"You better be right, Heavy. Archimedes is goingk to go crazy vit boredom. How is he supposed to enjoy himself vithout there being a nice, open chest cavity for me to shoo him away from?"

"I AM YELLING FOR NO DISCERNIBLE REASON WHATSOEVER!" shrieked the Soldier, for no discernible reason whatsoever.

"Sorry to keep y'all waitin'," puffed Engie. He was lugging a large sack behind him. "I jus' wanted ta show y'all a little somethin' I cooked up in the ol' lab."

Medic reached into the sack. "Goggles?" asked the Medic, his distaste evident. "Vat -"

"Now, let me explain. Y'all know that Pyro -" Pyro looked up at this, giving a cheery wave. Engineer lowered his voice. "Y'all know that Pyro there is a bit of a - a -" Engineer paused, trying to think of a polite way to phrase the statement. "An eccentric one."

"Oh, stuff it, hardhat. He's flipping crazy. Almost as crazy as Sol -"

"WHAT DID YOU SAY, MAGGOT? I WILL TELL YOU THAT NOBODY IS ANYWHERE NEAR AS CRAZY AS I AM!" In an instant, Soldier's hands were around Scout's neck.

"Alright, alright!" Scout choked. "Alright! Let - go - kghh-"

"SAY IT! SAY I'M THE MOST INSANE! THEN DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!"

"Now, cut that out, you two!" scolded the Engineer. "As I was sayin', the Pyro's a - a perfectly unique individual! So I made these virtual sensory modifiers to visually reconfigure the world in the same way that Pyro, who is full of quirky idiosyncrasies, does!" He beamed excitedly. "Now we'll finally know what's going through that head of his! Or possibly hers!"

"Vat? That's imp- ohhhhhhhhhh," breathed Medic, wonderstruck. He had put on a pair of goggles. "Kittens...puppies...candybutterflysparkles!" He reached out to touch something only he could see. The Spy head was dropped unceremoniously on the ground.

"Wha- Medic, are you all right?" asked Engineer.

"Rainbows?" asked Scout, somewhat nervously. It was a common rumor that rainbows made him weep like children at the end of Toy Story 3. It was all nonsense, of course. only double _only double_ rainbows made him cry.

"Maybe I should have tested it first-"

"SISSIES! I WILL PROVE ALL OF YOU SORRY EXCUSES FOR SOLDIERS WHAT REAL MEN-" Soldier broke off, staring into the distance. The goggles bulged comically on his face.

"Soldier?" Engineer asked warily. It was never a good sign when Soldier went quiet.

"Men, here are the facts as I know it. One: I am the prettiest, most magnificent unicorn in the history of pretty unicorns! Two: my mane is fragrant and luscious and catches the wind perfectly! I GOING INTO THE WOODS TO PICK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU A BOUQUET OF FLOWERS! DISMISSED!" Soldier marched purposefully out the door, swinging his arms rhythmically.

Engineer looked at the wall that Soldier was staring at. There was a mirror on it.

"All right. None of you touch those goggles-"

Demo, Heavy, Scout and Sniper had already put the goggles on. Spy looked on, bored.

"Wheee!" giggled Demoman. "It's like being tickled by angels!"

"How could zis happen?"

"Oi've nevah seen anything mo' beautiful in ma loife..." said the Sniper, his accent warping itself into a caricature of itself (that, frankly, was borderline cultural insensitivity).

Scout simply whimpered quietly.

Engineer's curiosity finally got the best of him. He pulled another pair of goggles out of the bag, fitting it around his face. "What in tarnation...?"

He was plunged into the relentless, garishly coloured world of Pyro's imagination. Music played loudly - a single soundtrack, on loop - _Do You Believe in Magic_ , by The Lovin' Spoonful. Clusters of lollipops grew out of a lawn covered with tufts of lush grass. Even though they were inside a building. The sky was blindingly bright, a soft, pastel blue, and the sun was perpetually shining. Even though they had a roof. And it was nighttime. Plump balloon-shaped animals floated by - kittens, puppies, balloonicorns - all grinning widely. To his utter surprise, the previously dead BLU Scout was alive and well - but was now less than two feet in height, chubby, and sported a diaper and two small, feathered wings. He tried to rub his eyes, but the goggles were in the way. He looked right, where he knew Heavy was - who was... a large, laughing teddy bear holding a minigun? He looked to the left. Demo-pegasus skipped - or rather, cantered, eye-patch and all, through the grassy field. A cuddly-looking koala wearing a slouch hat and aviator glasses rode on his winged back. In the distance, a bunny - no, cow - stood trembling near the base of a rainbow. At first, Engineer wasn't sure who he was looking at. He stepped closer. It was your run-of-the-mill dairy cow with brown and black spots on a white body. _Perfectly normal._ It was also wearing a baseball cap and a headset. _Absolutely workaday._ A duffel bag was strapped to its side. "Scout?"

The cow gave a start, glancing over at Engineer. "Engie? AhahahHAHAHAHA! You- you're a-" It pitched over sideways, laughing. "You're a POTBELLIED PIG! WITH A HARD HAT!"

Engineer stared in shock. The cow had udders. _Udders._ It, uh, she, continued to guffaw, its - _her -_ stubby, cloven legs kicking in the air.

"Odd...I always imagined you as more of a bunny-type creature..."

The cow stopped laughing for a moment. "What the hell are you-" the cow looked down on itself. "HOLY - ME! WHAT THE F-"

"Language, son."

"-RIED BUCKETS OF CHICKEN!" howled the self-conscious - and very female - cow, visibly upset. "Wha- wha- I'M A DUDE!"

"Of course, of course," Engineer said soothingly.

"Why am I a COW?"

"Well...that's how Pyro sees you."

"Yeah, but why am I a FEMALE cow?!"

"Hmm. Maybe that's how he - she - they - it - ah, forget it - explains your Mad Milk."

"Don't sugarcoat it," drawled a disembodied voice. "Scout, you possess stereotypically feminine characteristics. Your exaggerated indignation is your pathetic attempt recovering some of your self-perceived dignity. You are neither secure nor intelligent enough to realize the extent of your overcompensation."

A small crab materialized, accompanied by a musical flourish. It was red, mottled, with a flesh-coloured ring around its beady eyes that looked suspiciously like a mask.

"Well?" the crab practically boomed. Its voice, far too loud for its small size, was accented. French. "What are you staring at me for?" The crab pulled out a Pixie Stick with a claw, gnawing on it ravenously. Rainbows poured off the end.

The cow and the pig looked at each other. They burst out laughing.

"Ah. I see. You've gone the way of the Soldier."

"No- (said Cow-Scout, giggling uncontrollably) p-put on some goggles-"

"You should see the look on your face -"

"Join us!" screeched the Sniper and Demo-sus in unison, careening dangerously through the cotton-like clouds.

The crab rolled its eyes. "Fine. Just to see what you morons are losing your minds over."

It disappeared. When it came back, its tiny black eyes were widened in shock.

"Mon dieu - c'est magnifique...!" the crab mumbled. "Ces couleurs- !"

"What? We can't hear you! Demo-sus is so fuuuuuuun!" yelled Engineer and Scout, flying by on a joyful and astonishingly sprightly Demo. Scuttling towards the edge of a majestic cliff, Spycrab couldn't help but marvel at the -

Suddenly, the record scratched. If there was a record, that is. The music slowed and warped like water going down a drain, then cut out entirely with a gut-wrenching gurgle. Demo-sus lost his wings and fell from the sky, as Sniper, Engineer and Scout dropped on top of him. Spy blinked rapidly, quickly regaining his senses, having been under the intoxicating influence of Pyrovision for the shortest amount of time. Medic came stumbling back, confused and goggle-less. Soldier dropped the bouquet of cacti he had torn unceremoniously from the ground outside. The bloodied hunk of flesh that was the BLU Scout became just that, bleeding quietly onto the floor. They all stared at each other, dazed and paralyzed with the sort of all-consuming horror that results from bad acid trips and particularly traumatic nightmares.

An anxious Pyro tapped Heavy's head, peering into his glazed eyes. They had been happily playing with their fire when their teammates all started acting oddly. They noticed strange items attached to their cute, chubby faces and pulled them off. Now they were all frozen in place and uttering strange, disconcerting noises. They poked Pigineer.

The Engineer got up slowly, rubbing his elbow. He looked around, looking relieved. He chuckled nervously.

"Heh - well, at least now we know Pyro's thinking..."


	2. Medic's Medi Gun

Rather Lengthier Note of Author: Hello, denizens of Earth. You've clicked again. I see most of you have been following my advice regarding not wasting your valuable time on reading or leaving review unless a grave crime against fiction has been committed. Very good. For the one who left one: Indeed, Pyro must save them all from insanity, for that is the greatest irony (perhaps not as ironic as Soldier lecturing us on bigotry, though. That'll come later).

What is disturbing to me is that some (very few – phew) people appear to be reading this story, either in part, or (horror) in its entirety. Now, why in the world would you do that to yourself? I suppose you've perused all the good fiction in the world and are forced to read this insufferable drivel. Since you are so clearly desperate, I've no choice but to indulge you further. Here is some more drivel. Perhaps more ridiculous than the last one.

This is called a one-shot, right? Or is it a drabble? I can never tell.

* * *

 **Medic's Medi Gun**

The Medic hummed to himself, wrapping up the remains of the poor sap that wandered into the wrong sterile room at the wrong freaking time. Now, many animals have many more blood types than humans do, and different ones at that, but who was Medic to reject a candidate on the basis of their blood type? What was he, a bigot? So maybe he used an iffy organ, and maybe some random postal service worker's family would be holding a hastily scheduled funeral. It was Sniper's fault, really. Giving the mailman the address to their base by sending out all those letters to his parents was completely out of line. Medic never wrote anything involving paper, to avoid leaving a trail. His prescriptions were always scribbled directly onto the patient, whether they needed it or not. Then injected into the patient.

Willing or not.

Conscious or not.

He prided himself on his affinity for medicine and mindless – no, completely mindful – slaughter. Even when stuck healing a bunch of ungrateful, undeserving, unenlightened, and uneducated (save for Engineer) piles of human waste, he still managed to steal half a dozen samples of various bodily fluids and turn breathing people into corpses. He would catalogue the fluids later, once he'd dealt with the subject who provided them. He'd get Pyro to incinerate the remains, and send the ashes to the family anonymously. No muss, no fuss.

Spy walked in, as he was wont to do. (Busybody.) He was dressed in an immaculately tailored pin-striped suit, which he wore so often it was hardly worth mentioning, but it will be mentioned anyway. Deal with it.

He looked in distaste at the blood-soaked sheet covering the disemboweled stranger.

"Is that another subject of your little experiments?"

"Nein. No. What makes you think that?"

"Well, for one, it says 'Totally not Subject No. 840' on it."

"Zat could mean anyting."

"Your accent's thickening. You must be either lying or reverting into funetik accentry. I pronounced 'phonetic' with an 'f', by the way."

"What?"

"Never mind that. Well, you're beginning to attract attention. You have to be less...obvious."

"I am the epitome of discretion! How could I be any less obvious?"

"Don't include a picture of yourself posing with your victims' skeletons when you send their remains to their next of kin."

Medic considered the advice. He was forced to acknowledge the fact that he may have taken some liberties with some of the subjects in the distant past. But he was very careful now!

At that moment, the Engineer decided to pop in. "Howdy, Doctor! I've got some new ideas for improvin' the efficiency of the Dispens– what in the dickens is that?"

Medic hid the gore-spattered instruments behind his back, whistling nonchalantly. Engineer gingerly lifted a corner of the sheet and quickly recoiled in disgust. "Aw, hell, not another one!"

"Vat do you mean? Zere were no ozer ones!"

"Accent."

"Ruhe! Sei _still_!" Medic yelled in WordReference German. _Nun, wer einen Akzent hat?_ he thought to himself smugly in Bing German.

Spy ignored the blatant abuse of (often inaccurate) online translation services that didn't exist in the 1970s, replying in perfect Google Translate: "Sei nicht so kindisch nicht, Doktor. Es muss nicht werden Sie. Sie machen sich lustig über Ihre vermeintlichen Sprache. Auch Google besser."

"What are you talking about? That made no sense!"

"I hope not. Do you know what doesn't make sense? Why we keep around a doctor with no self-control when it comes to human experimentation, when all the medicine we need lies in the Medi Gun."

A few ethnic slurs later, Medic was in the midst of a fully-fledged tirade.

Spy was slightly taken aback at how many foreign curses Medic was familiar with, but quickly decided that the entire exercise was immensely amusing. Engineer fidgeted in place, eyes darting from sang-froid Spy to furious Medic, and then straying to the safe, empty hallway.

"My country has a higher GDP than yours!"

"Well, my country has a better history of foreign and domestic policy."

Medic glared at no one in particular. "You cannot use the Medi Gun! It's not just pushing a lever, you don't have the medical training! Do you know what the anterior cruciate ligament is? Do you know the proper response if a febrile response triggers a seizure? Do you know the significance of abnormal hematocrit levels?"

"You're still on that? As far as I know, the anterior cruciate ligament is found in the knee, connecting the tibia and the femur, febrile seizures generally do not indicate severe, underlying health problems, and abnormal hematocrit levels are very, very serious indeed."

"Lucky guesses," muttered the Medic.

"How about an experiment? For one battle, you surrender the Medi Gun to one of us. If we succeed in our endeavour, we will take care of all our healing, and you needn't complain about our unworthiness any further. If we fail, you get a break and you will regain the Medi Gun."

"Done! I'd like to see you Sch-"

"Uh, if I may jus' interrupt," interrupted the Engineer. "I am going to leave now."

He hurried out of the infirmary, clutching his toolbox to his chest.

After an eternity of deliberation, it slowly dawned on Medic that he could use this as a lesson to that francophone upstart. Cursing profusely under his breath in (idk what) German, Medic hauled his beloved-but-not-as-beloved-as-vivisection-itself Medi Gun up from behind one of the gurneys. He threw it (albeit not very hard) at Spy, who cloaked and reappeared behind Medic. The Medi Gun thudded to the ground, lying pathetically on its side as both mercenaries stared each other down, daring the other to pick it up.

No one spoke for a while.

* * *

Medic and Spy were the first ones up the following morning. They went through the motions of preparing for battle with exaggerated purposefulness. This upset Soldier greatly, as he took great pleasure in being able to personally yell at every one of them for being lazy wastes of skins that had to sleep past 0500 hours. But today, even he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"I don't think you're actually French!"

"And why is that?"

"You don't pronounce your 'th's like 'z's, and you never pepper your English gratuitously with your mother tongue!"

"J'espère que vous n'êtes pas aussi bête que vous semblez."

"Deux personnes peuvent jouer a ce jeu! Erdäpfel! Schneeflocken! Auf Wiedersehen! _Something else German_!"

"Why are you using anglicisms with missing accents, and why you talking about potatoes and snowflakes?"

"How can you hear the accents?" demanded Medic, bewildered.

"Never mind that," the Spy said smoothly. "Hand over the Medi Gun."

" _Schweine_ – " Medic cut himself off. There was no use arguing with the deceitful Spy, who was obviously not French and possibly committing cultural appropriation depending on who you asked. He clearly had no compunction telling his blatant lies of disrespect and deceptive duplicity. He probably drowned children in their sleep and ate their corpses with fries and jaywalked while cheating on his taxes. There is no way to reason with a man so amoral.

By the time he concluded his ruminations about the nature of the morally deficit Spy, they had arrived at the control point, with no BLUs to be seen.

"Well, we appear to be the first ones here," mused the Medic. For a moment, all seemed to be peaceful. Then chaos exploded into life around them.

The enemy Demoman had laid down an intricate matrix of transparent stickybombs, invisible and innocuous against the overpowering blue of the surroundings, with the utmost care: by spraying them in random directions. Their foe's calculated guile was only matched by his utter idiocy in placing stickies everywhere _except_ the control point. All of them detonated in terrible, exquisite, perfect, yet utterly ineffectual harmony. Spy and Medic stood unharmed and unimpressed in the eye of the fiery maelstrom, as the BLU Demo screamed incoherent obscenities at them from his tactical position lying drunk at the bottom of a ditch.

"Should we go and kill them now?"

"After you."

* * *

Unfortunately for Medic, nobody was letting him kill anyone.

"No, Medic, we need you!" insisted the Engineer, frantically trying to set up a dispenser as he repaired a flagging Level 2 Sentry. ( _However flattering this is, it's not the time – I have a point to make!_ Medic seethed internally.) "Stay back to heal the injured!"

"I don't have the Medi Gun, Spy does! Let me go!" he cried indignantly.

"WHAT?! Why? 'Ave you been wearing Pyrovision goggles, mate?" the Sniper shouted, trying to aim at the enemy Sniper and the enemy Medic simultaneously. "Are you wearing them right now?!"

"I am not insane! Now let go of me so I can go and stab some people armed with rocket launchers in the chest with a bone saw!"

The Engineer stared at him briefly, then went back to hammering away at his Sentry. Sniper shook his head in disbelief, then ducked as a spray of Tomislav bullets flew past Medic, barely missing Sniper by a hair.

Medic frowned disapprovingly, and stomped off, yelling, "YOU'RE MORE OF A DESIGNATED MARKSMAN ANYWAY!"

* * *

Spy was not having a very good day at battle.

To start with, once people caught on that Medic didn't have the Medi Gun, nor any health-restoring devices whatsoever, they had come after him, alternatively begging and demanding him for healing while he was cloaked, in full view of the enemy. (Not that that mattered – half the time, the Medi Gun didn't cloak with him. This led to more deaths than he was willing to admit.)

That in itself was manageable, if annoying: he simply flicked on the Medi Gun, healed the ungrateful troglodyte in question, and went about his business. But the Pyro of the opposing team was playing with new toys. Spy would normally have no trouble trickstabbing the little firebug, even when it was armed with the W+M1-enabling Phlogistinator and shooting at people willy-nilly with its Flare Gun, but today, he was holding the blasted Medi Gun. He had forgotten what exactly he wanted to prove – was it that they didn't need a Medic? Yes, that was it – but he had wanted someone else to wield the Medi Gun.

Unfortunately, nobody that was intelligent enough to wield it was available. He was stuck with it, cursing its inability to fade as he Dead Ringered for the thirtieth time to escape from a cackling BLU Pyro, spraying gleeful flames over what seemed like an entire football field.

Suddenly, a piercing scream rent the air.

Whirling around, Spy was greeted with the sight of the enemy Heavy being confronted by a bonesaw-wielding Medic. Medic had been hit in the left shoulder, but he still tried valiantly to swipe at the BLU Heavy. The Heavy revved down his Tomislav, picked up the RED Medic, and casually ripped one arm off.

Well.

Spy dropped the accursed Medi Gun discreetly, and changed direction abruptly. He stifled a grin as the Pyro blasted the area once with the Phlogistinator, and finding no flaming Spy, wandered off confusedly towards the control point, where the Soldiers were having a duel of nitwits. Spy stole quickly behind the BLU Heavy, chuckled, uncloaked, and plunged a knife into his heart.

Judging by the screeches coming from the control point, the everyone was there, except for Medic and Spy.

Spy walked leisurely around the disintegrating body of the Heavy and crouched down so he was almost level with the violently shivering Medic, who was making a low keening noise that sounded like a cat in labour.

"You had to butt in, didn't you?" Spy asked. The Medic, glassy-eyed and increasingly pale, still managed to glare.

Spy brushed himself off, walked over to where he had left the Medi Gun, pushed on the lever, and trained it on Medic. "Leave the fighting to the professionals, will you, doctor? Stick to what you do best – oh wait, I'm doing it right now."

The colour returned to Medic's face as muscle and bone knit back together. "You don't understand," spluttered the Medic. "Stop vat you're doing!"

"I'm healing you, you imbecile. Be quiet."

" _Dummkopf! Das is ein_ –"

But it was too late.

Spy stared at his handiwork. The arm had grown back, sprouted from the bleeding stump like a young sapling out of a nurse log, and it was perfectly healthy. That was not what was wrong.

Medic now had three arms.

" _Scheisskopf_!" shrieked the Medic. "This is why medical training is necessary to operate it! I'll bet you've given the entire team heaps of self-aware beauty marks, with how you're using zat thing!" Muttering to himself in Angrish, Medic snatched the Medi Gun from Spy with his two right hands, and jabbed a finger into Spy's chest with his left. "You must envision the healing you're doing! Joints, sinew, blood, what have it! You must have overstimulated the tissue repair and activated two sets of arm buds! Now I'll have to remove tumours from everyone, and an arm from myself! I hope you're happy!"

Spy didn't know how to respond to that. All that this day had taught him was that he was utterly done with his entire team of misfits, and though perhaps they did need a Medic, he wished the one they had would be less of a drama queen.

He decided later, though, that it was probably a mistake to annoy the one who currently (or, in this case, formerly) held a license that allowed them to perform complex surgery, as Medic stood gleefully over him armed with comically oversized scalpel and insufficient anesthetic.

~FIN~

Yes. With shameless tildes.

* * *

EDIT: Since I can't reply directly to anons to thank them for their niceness (frankly undeserved on my part), here: Thank you anons! You're like constructive IPs on Wikipedia! Rare and delicate and to be preserved. (You don't _have_ to be nice, you know. If you hate me you can tell me. I can take it.)

I'm alternatively serious and stupid. If these stories juxtaposed comes off as disparate (I have seen collections of stories like this) – and jarringly so – I apologize. Bear with me. I would address this personally to Guest, but Guest is a faceless, nameless Guest. Sorry, Guest. Thank you for the advice, by the way! It's always appreciated.

SECOND EDIT: Freaking TF2 Wiki says it's "Medi Gun", not "Medigun". I've freaking updated it to match. *is embarrassed*


	3. Demoman's Demolition

A of N wait no N of A: So, this was supposed to be just ONE story. But then I realized that I had marked it as incomplete. So I decided to make this a full Meet the Team of weirdness while self-deprecating in a vaguely irritating manner. So if you're reading this, yaaay? Peering into my abyss of a mind is honestly not at all interesting, I find.

I will now state that I make no pretense to be able to write good fan fiction (what is that even). I cannot do crack or trollfics properly. I am incapable of fluff. I don't know what I do. In all seriousness, thank you, readers, for not coming to my house and burning me at the stake.

(The following text was taken from the Scots Wikipedia article on Scots.)

 _" **Scots** (or "Lallans", a poetic spellins for lawlands) is ae Wast Germanic leid thit's spaken en the Lawlands an Northren Isles oScotland an en the stewartrie o Ulster en Ireland (whaur it's kent as "Ulster-Scots", "Scotch", or "Ullans"). En maist airts, it's spaken anent the Scots Gaelic an Inglis leids. Anglian spikkers wer weil staiblisht in sooth-eist Scotland bi the 7t yeirhunder."_

(Okay I can't do this.)

(Besides, Demo is from the _Highlands._ There, they would be far more likely to speak Scottish Gaelic.)

* * *

 **Demoman's Demolition**

It was early morning, or late afternoon. There was a lull in the battle, and all was calm. Or was it?

Demoman was drunk anyway. He made it a point to never go to battle sober. He lobbed a couple of grenades at no one in particular, and yawned. Distant screams. He smiled.

He was getting ready to crack open another bottle of scrumpy, when a paper airplane - its looping, lazy spirals bringing it closer and closer to the earth - hit him in the eyepatch.

Stupid lack of depth perception.

He opened the plane. On it, a mess of words swam before his eyes. "You are reading this right now. 'S i cànan dùthchasach na h-Alba a th' anns a' Ghàidhlig. 'S i ball den teaghlach de chànanan Ceilteach dhen mheurGhoidhealach a tha anns a' Ghàidhlig. Tha Goidhealach a' gabhail a-steach na cànanan Gàidhealach gu lèir; Gàidhlig na h-Alba, Gàidhlig na h-Èireann, agus Gàidhlig Mhanainn agus gu dearbh chan eil anns an fhacal "Goidhealach" ach seann fhacal a tha a' ciallachadh "Gàidhealach".

Demo frowned. Was someone attempting to make a mockery of his Scottish ancestry? Should he be offended? Should whoever did this be ashamed of themselves? Why was an extended paragraph in Scottish Gaelic _about_ Scottish Gaelic on a paper airplane being thrown at him? Why did it say "You are reading this right now?"

As his scrumpy-soaked brain tried to wrap itself around the self-referential nature of the note, succumbing to endless regressive ruminations about reality, and casting doubt upon his own understanding of life itself, the BLU team's Pyro walked past him, into the base, and took the intelligence.

That was when he realized that his scrumpy had been drugged.

* * *

 _Soldier stood frowning at the incoherently babbling lump on the ground._

 _"What's goin' on, Solly?" asked Engineer._

 _"It's trying to communicate with me. I can't understand it. Not enough freedom in its voice."_

 _"Damn it, Solly, that's Demoman!" Engineer stepped closer, about to help the Scotsman up, but paused. "Do you hear that?" It was the sound of much riotous laughter and celebration and underhanded schemes, which would have been a beautiful sound if it weren't coming from the other team._

 _"THE ENEMY HAS TAKEN THE INTELLIGENCE!"_

 _"Aw, hell…"_

 _"YOU FAIL, LOSERS, AND YOUR PARENTS NEVER LOVED YOU!"_

 _"Shut UP, BLU Soldier!"_

 _They looked back to their base, which was on flames. "Already?!"_

 _"Well, all that alcohol and volatile substances that Demoman hoards -"_

 _"I get it!"_

* * *

Demoman awoke, and his brain was doing a very good impression of being attacked by a headless horseless horseman who tried and failed to take his actual head. He almost wished that the hypothetical headless horseless horseman had succeeded, because as far as he knew, the reticular formation of the brain was necessary for wakeful alertness, and headlessness would probably mean its removal. He paused, remarking blearily that this was the most reflective hangover he had ever had. By some miracle, he managed to reevolve into an upright-walking member of the hominid superfamily, and stumbled his way back to the base.

The wrong base, actually. Twice. Two respawns later, he turned around and headed for the building coloured red instead of blue, which was surprisingly more effective than picking directions at random.

When he arrived at the base, he found an intervention waiting for him.

"Aw, bloody hell!" he griped. Why was everything piling up on this one day? It was almost as if it were all contrived by some unseen force.

"Demoman," began Engineer. "You're a grown man, and you can make your own choices. We're just becoming concer-"

"YOUR RUM-SODDEN ASS IS LOSING US MATCHES!" interrupted Soldier.

"It's scrumpy," corrected Demoman.

"Whatever. The point is, we are going to show you a very nice interactive video about the dangers of alcohol," Medic chimed in. "Maybe it'll help you with your reward deficiency syndrome, probably stemming from your traumatic backst- childhood."

"Aw, bloody-" Demoman muttered. "Wait! What did those BLUs put in me scrumpy?"

"Actually, it was just more scrumpy," Engineer explained. "Just a different brand than you're used to."

"I knew I tasted inferiority in that scrumpy!"

"Can we just roll the clip?" whined Scout. Nobody really wanted him there, but there was really no getting rid of him once he got it into his mind that he was invited to a party involving alcohol, even if it was an _intervention_ party that was _anti-_ alcohol _._

The projector projected the film leader - which, since it was put together by Soldier, skipped the number 6 and bizarrely featured a picture of Sun Tzu in a grass skirt.

 **Chemistry lessons: Alcohol**

 _"Alcohols" are characterized by the presence of an -OH, or hydroxide, ion; this is called a "hydroxyl functional group"._

 _They are extremely noxious toxins, as the normal liver function of detoxification involves oxidizing the alcohol compound which leads to the formation of formaldehyde, and then formic acid._

 _Formic acid, also known as methanoic acid-_

"Can ye get on with it?"

 _Shut up, Demoman, we're here to inform you of the evils of alcohol and deconstruct the stereotype of the hard-drinking Scotsman!_

"I am a hard-drinking Scotsman by choice, ya wingnut!"

 _That's what we're trying to fix!_

"Well, can ye get on with it?! Who cares about kiddie pool organic chemistry – like, _functional groups_? Are you kiddin' me? Who doesn't know about that?"

 _Shut up!_

"Oh, look at me, able to differentiate between carboxylic acids and alcohols! I am such a special, smart wee bairn of a chemist!"

 _SHUT UP_

"You know, you could focus on the specific health effects and the consequences of alcoholism on others," offered Engineer helpfully.

Medic stroked his chin. "I do have many cirrhosis-scarred livers on display."

 _WOULD YOU ALL BE QUIET?!_

The entire room went quiet.

 _Alright, I'll give you the MADD special! Geez! If touching testimonials of actual victims that suffer from this very real issue doesn't get to you, nothing will! ALCOHOL MAKES YOU BLIND AND SLOWLY KILLS YOU_

 _ITS SWEET TEMPTATION IN A BOTTLE, BUT ITS SLOW POISON PROVIDES NOTHING BUT PAIN IN THE END_

 _IT DRAINS YOUR WILL TO RESIST IT EVEN AS IT SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYS EVERY PART OF YOUR LIFE WORTH LIVING_

 _GO AHEAD_

 _KEEP DRINKING_

 _SEE IF I CARE_

"…See?" Demoman said. He shifted in his seat. "That's…better."

"It relies too much on shock value, and the prose is a bit purple," mused Engineer. "They should try delivering on some of those testimonials."

 _YOU ARE ALL SOCIOPATHS. I'M LEAVING._

"hUdrrr!" exclaimed the Pyro, waving enthusiastically.

"Well, I'm off," Demoman announced in the awkward, tension-ridden room. He got up, stumbling into the door a few times before heading to his store of scrumpy.

"Should we tell him Pyro burned his entire stash?"

"Let him find out for himself, Sniper."

From the distance, they heard a long, bloodcurdling scream.

* * *

The following week, Demoman went completely alcohol-free while he waited for his new secret shipments of scrumpy that he was nearly certain had already been sabotaged. For the first few days, his system rebelled and kept him in a state of affected inebriation in a desperate attempt to recreate its natural state, but he soon was able to separate his hallucinations of his heart and liver from actual organs flying around his head during battles. After the "adjustment period" (or, as Medic called it, "breaking in of the horse"), he found himself thrust into a state of unparalleled clarity of thought and consciousness. Never had it been that things were properly focused in his vision, never had it been so evident that doing complex mathematics requires the prefrontal cortex, never had the chemical equations for producing trinitrotoluene assembled themselves and balanced so perfectly in his mind.

He was absolutely miserable.

Half-heartedly launching stickybombs at a random moving target that he could precisely aim at but missed on purpose, he sat in the shade of the respawn building and bemoaned his fate as a teetotaler. He briefly considered trying to find some sort of substitute. Hell, he'd even find Miller's Light appealing at this point.

Meanwhile, everyone else was being killed.

"How is it that we're doing _worse_ than before?" screamed Scout before being blown into a thousand gibs. Archimedes flew past and settled on Medic's shoulder.

"I don't know about this, Medic," muttered Engineer. "Do you really think giving him more alcohol is necessary?"

"Cold turkey doesn't work, you know," the Medic admonished, stroking Archimedes' head while feeding him birdseed.

"I know, but what you're proposing is to keep reinforcing his habit!"

"It turns out that respawning negates most types of damage incurred in the period leading up to the death, including toxigenic necrosis, major trauma, and -"

"You know I have no idea what you're talking about. Stop messing with me."

The Medic cleared his throat. "Vell, it means if we give him alcoholic beverages in reasonable amounts on a schedule, we are within ethical bounds. I don't vant him drinking any more than you do, he's very sloppy, but this is the best way to maintain our team's performance." He smiled at the small dove in his palm. "Isn't that right, Archimedes?"

"You're seeking validation from a columbid and not the opinion of a man who currently holds eleven Doctors of Philosophy in various fields of hard science?"

"Yes," retorted the Medic. "He isn't as much of a _downer_ as you are. My solution is perfect!"

"Well, there are many factors to this problem, and I think it's premature to assume that one's first idea is the be-all end-all so early in the development phase-"

"Well, actually, I think that your problem's resolved itself," the Spy observed drily, materializing behind them like the spook he was.

"Spy! Where did you come from? I thought you were lying low until it was your turn to be featured!"

"I came from France. ("Oh really?" muttered the Medic.) Look over at the BLU Demoman." The BLU in question was standing on the control point, holding a half-drained bottle of scrumpy and singing loudly. The BLU Soldier was yelling at him to GET HIS ASS DOWN FROM THERE and HELP HIS TEAM. The RED Pyro obliged, airblasting the BLU Demoman into the path of one of the Engineer's Level 3 Sentries.

The Engineer gasped in realization.

"They cancel each other out…"

"Also, no one wants to be like that."

Demoman chose that time to jog over, his eye wide. "Do I really act like - _that_?"

"No…"

"Yes."

"Okay, yes."

Recoiling in horror, Demoman ran off, screaming "I'm never touchin' another drop of scrumpy!"

The Medic frowned, disappointed. "That was a deus ex machina."

"No," stated Spy, smoking a cigarette cynically. "That's only if it works. Just drip-feed him alcohol and wean him off it like you planned. He won't last a day in self-enforced sobriety."

And he didn't.

~ZE END~

I'm not going to stop with the tildes.


	4. Soldier's Sollybird

A/N=N/A: There really isn't any order I'm posting these in, although upon consideration, I probably should have done them in order of the Meet the Team video releases. I'm resorting to consultations of numerology and Wikipedia for justification. I'm also running out of novel ways to write "author's note." (Any suggestions?) Also, I'm running out of ways to sucker punch the fourth wall. (Please?)

Oh well.

I believe these stories are short side adventures that lean heavily on the fourth wall. Like the literary equivalent of the Jarate comic. Oh dear. Did I just call this stuff "literary"? Goodness gracious. I've crossed a line, haven't I?

Now I present the incorrigible Soldier. Sorry that there's actually not too much Sollybirding – there's just a lot of Sollyness.

* * *

 **Soldier's Sollybird**

Soldier surveyed his territory with a careful eye, watching his target with grim satisfaction. The scum-sucking fruit basket in question was 512 hammer units – I mean 9.75 meters – away from the entrance of the RED base of operations, which housed the precious Intelligence. Soldier shot another rocket at his feet, screaming his pride incoherently, and prepared to rain down flaming justice upon the son of a veryniceladywhowasnottoblameforheroffspring'scurrentshortcomings – the spy of the BLU team.

He missed.

Not one to admit total incapacitation, he called out, "You call that breaking my spine? Because that was pretty effective!"

As he lay bleeding out with his femur shattered and his skull fractured, still calling futilely after the retreating back of his target, he saw the Spy enter _the building_. The _one building_ no one should ever enter if they didn't proudly wear Mann Co. coats made in China in the colours of purest red – the intelligence room.

"No!" he gurgled. He attempted to crawl towards the building, but his vision cut out before he could move an inch.

* * *

When he respawned, the battle was over. The intelligence had been taken from the other team, and the eight of them had hunted down and killed eight fleeing, disarmed BLU mercenaries. But the BLU Spy was still unaccounted for.

In the War Room, the entire team, save for Demoman, had convened.

"MEN, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" He wrested a power drill away from a reluctant Engineer, and held it aloft. "HOWEVER, THIS IS! DO NOT BE CONFUSED AS TO WHICH ACTIVITY AND/OR INANIMATE OBJECT I AM SPEAKING OF AT THE MOMENT!"

Soldier then launched into a long-winded explanation of the situation ("BLU Spy is in the base"), somehow incorporating his pretending-he-was-part-of-the-army days. Gleefully, he described each gory detail of every neck snapping, evisceration, dismemberment, and exsanguination he had ever witnessed, caused, experienced, or imagined. In the middle of a story about a disemboweled ally, a pineapple, and his dramatic rescue, Demoman walked in.

"Demoman!" the other mercenaries shouted in relief.

"All right, Soldier, get on with it," slurred Demoman. "By the by, which one of ye louts painted a toilet sign on the War Room – " He promptly fell forward in a dead sleep.

"All right, unconscious Demoman, I will! OUR HONOR IS AT STAKE!"

"Honor? Without a 'u'? Isn't that inconsistent with the rest of us?" inquired the Spy.

"I refuse to speak that word in that un-American form! Only commies use that alternative spelling!"

"They probably aren't the only ones…"

"Do you even know what communism is?" asked Engineer.

"Sure I do! It means wearing red hats and hating America!"

"By America, you mean the United States of America, right? Not South America or –"

"There's only one true America!"

"…Right."

Engineer suppressed a sigh. "Well, none of us are in the humanities. We aren't really an authority on the subject. But your rejection of all the tenets of an entire ideology must not be predicated on a knee-jerk reaction to jingoistic mentalities and societal pressures, Soldier – it must be educated, it must be –"

"Round! Soft! No, round!"

"…Well-rounded, yes."

Medic fetched the dusty encyclopedia that he usually kept in the fridge next to the baboon hearts, leafed to section C, and scanned the page.

"Competition between jellyfish and peanutbutterfish…common misconceptions about the Pacific Northwest tree octopus…communication between humans and the Invisible Pink Unicorn...ah! Communism!" He cleared his throat importantly, and began to project the lecture voice that most egomaniacal – or just maniacal – doctors develop as a part of their maturing process.

"Broadly speaking, communism is a sociopolitical and economic ideology that aims to create a society that completely eliminates the conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. Everything is equally owned – there is no state, no money, and no social classes. An early branch, Marxism, was delineated in the Communist Manifesto, which was written in –"

"Oh yeah, the Communist Manifesto! Wasn't it written by those two old farts, uh…Marx and Engels or something?"

Slowly, the eight classes turned to face Scout. Medic set down the encyclopedia.

"Yes, in fact. It was."

"What are you all lookin' at me for?"

Engineer inconspicuously took out his spiked wrench. At least he probably thought it was inconspicuous. (It's a spiked wrench! Ain't no way that friedbucketsofchicken thing was going unnoticed.)

Scout blanched. "Hey, wh-what're you doing with that?"

"Nothing, Scout! Ve're just a group of friends having friendly conversation!" exclaimed the Medic, frantically signaling _"Get me my freaking bone saw"_ to Heavy, who simply shook his head in exasperation.

"Accent," muttered Spy.

"SPHUY!" yelled Pyro, who was never very much one for subtlety or subterfuge.

Scout scrunched his face up in confusion. He was not one for subtlety either. "Oh! Don't worry! I have no idea what the Communist Manifesto is! But that history teacher in the high school I went to earlier wouldn't shut up about it –"

"WHAT IS THAT HISTORY TEACHER'S NAME? WAS IT COMMUNIST?!"

"You – ach, Dummköpfen..."

To alleviate the tension, Engineer asked, "So, why _are_ nouns capitalized in German?"

"Vell, it's like this, you see –"

"NO ONE IS GOING TO ANSWER A QUESTION THAT CONTAINS THE WORD 'GERMAN' IN IT!" Soldier paused in reflection. "OR 'NOUN'! I HATE GRAMMAR! But 'capitalize' is okay, because it reminds me of 'capitalism', and capitalism is the food of freedom."

Engineer sighed. "Continue, Medic."

"Danke. Nouns –"

"AND STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Soldier paced the entire length of the meeting room table, wrestling the others out of the way, deep (or perhaps shallow) in thought. It was almost like Engineer was _encouraging_ pro-German discourse. And that set forth a train of thought in his incomprehensible mind.

 _Hippies = 2 syllables_

 _Hippies = slappable_

 _Therefore, slappable=2 syllables._

He shook his head. This equation wasn't helpful – slappable was not a word.

 _Socialism = 9 letters_

 _Communism = 9 letters_

 _9-9=0_

 _Pies are round, like zeros_

 _'Pies' sounds like 'spies'_

 _Yes, we're getting somewhere…_

"Uh, Soldier?"

"Shut up! I'm trying to work here!"

 _Engineer = less than 11 letters_

 _Communist = more than 2 letters_

 _11-2=9_

 _Communist had 9 letters!_

 _Commie = communist for short_

 _Engie = engineer for short_

 _Engie rhymes with commie!_

 _Engie is a commie!_

 _Commies sent pies! No, wait –_

 _Commies sent_ spies _!_

 **SPIES!**

The entire train(wreck) of (il)logic led to only one possibility –

 _That yellow-bellied, yellow-hatted, y-_

"You." He spat the word with enough venom to kill a thousand elephants even if the venom in question had an LD50 of 6.022X10^23 g. He grabbed Engineer – or should he say _BLU Spy?_! A few of the mercs stepped forward, but was warned away by Engineer, who prepared to swing his spiked wrench.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! You're accusing Engineer of being a spy? But why?" Scout asked.

"He has an accent."

"And we do not have accent?" rumbled the Heavy.

Soldier chuckled. "No, Heavy, though I am finding it a difficult task to understand you through your speech impediment that coincidentally makes you sound like a Siberian commie. I would never mock you because of silly things like speech impediments. You can't help it. You should not be ashamed of it! If anyone makes fun of you, just tell them, 'I am a proud red-blooded American and you can go shove your mockery up your–'"

"Vat about me?" Medic asked. "Don't I have an accent?"

Soldier chuckled even louder. By definition, it was probably close to a full laugh. "No, Medic, it is clearly your lack of education in the beautiful language of America. Miss Pauling told me your sad story of being raised by dyslexic goats. We can hardly blame you if you are too stupid to understand the ins and outs of American. Besides, I can't make fun of the mentally inferior of our great country – that is ableist and insensitive and weak!"

Medic's eye twitched. " _English_ was derived from a proto-Germanic dialect, you Scheisskopf, and you are speaking very inaccurate English if you compare it to English from England -" Heavy quickly dragged the protesting Medic away and held a large hand over his mouth.

The Spy did not want to join in in what he (rightly) considered to be blithering nonsense. But Scout, quickly catching on to a pattern, opened his rather large mouth and asked, "What about Frenchie here?"

Soldier chuckled even more loudly. At this point, we would probably call it guffawing. "No, Scout speaking for Spy, if Spy were a spy, Spy wouldn't call himself 'Spy'! I would see it coming so fast I couldn't even react to me reacting to it! I wasn't born yesterday!"

"What about Demo?" clamoured Scout. Demoman snorted, stirred a little at the mention of his name, and went back to snoring. "He is drunk! You can't sound more American than that!"

A murmur of assent went around the circle, everyone tacitly going _well, yes, that does sound very American_.

"What about me?"

Soldier chortled, roared, and cackled in endless mirth. "Ha! You must be joking! You, a Spy?"

Scout looked at him expectantly.

Soldier looked back at him. "You make me sad."

Scout looked away, pouting.

"Also, he tried to attack me!"

"Vell, maybe it's because you grabbed him first!"

"Hrrdur –" began Pyro.

"Enough talk. You words are just sound illusions."

"But-"

"SOUND. ILLUSIONS!"

With one deft movement, Soldier brought his shovel down on the neck of the Engineer. Engineer's face went blank – no time even for surprise to register – and he crumpled to the floor.

* * *

Silence.

Then chaos.

* * *

"SOLDIER! YOU KILLED ENGINEER, GOTTVERDAMMT!" shrieked Medic. "DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY EXOTIC BLACK-MARKET ORGANS IT IS GOING TO TAKE ME TO FIX THAT?"

Scout rocked back and forth in the corner, whimpering quietly. Pyro grabbed the sides of their mask and wailed mournfully. Demoman woke up for the third time, and stayed awake, gaping at the corpse that had appeared on the floor. "NOOOOOOO!" flashed the Dispenser's display. "MOTHERRRRR!" Heavy stared at the Dispenser in shock, then back at Soldier.

"I did you all a favor, ungrateful maggots! He was clearly a spy! This was a triumph!" Soldier declared, triumphantly.

"Oh yes, it was a huge success!" said the Spy sarcastically. "Do tell! How did you so brilliantly determine that it was Engineer that was the spy among us?"

"It was obvious!" Soldier began pacing around the room, still basking in his postmurder glow. "He was the only one using an American accent to lull us into a false sense of security."

"So let us recapitulate. You're racist, hypocritically ableist, zealously patriotic to the point of bigotry, xenophobic, and a misguided linguistic imperialist to top it off."

"Yes! Exactly!" declared Soldier proudly. He paused. "What is bigotry?"

In the midst of all the commotion, Engineer walked in.

"He's still alive!" cried Scout.

"You doofuses," laughed Engineer. "You know respawn is still on, right?"

"Ohhh! Respawn!"

They all laughed it off. The laughing Medic snuck behind Soldier and stuck him with a needle. They all laughed as Soldier was dragged away, insensate, to the infirmary. They all laughed too hard to notice the Scout quietly taking the Demoman's Stickybomb Launcher, filching several stickies, gently securing them to the center of the underside of the table, and slipping outside.

Everyone, save the elusive Scout, was engulfed in an explosion.

* * *

The BLU Spy, holding both teams' Intelligence briefcases, looked back the flaming remains of the RED base and smiled. "Payback, connards."

~~LA FIIIIN~~

Screen cuts to black. Canned applause. The curtain falls down, revealing an embarrassed stagehand. Wait, stagehand? I thought it was a sitcom…!


	5. Sniper's Snipe Hunt

Ridiculously long A/Note: Merry non-denominational holidays to everyone, regardless of creed or system of belief! Peace on earth, goodwill towards sentient creatures, long live the Force and may it prosper. I hope this brightens your day or at the very least doesn't dim it.

Well, I am halfway-ish through this compendium. I really must thank you all for being so nice (thanks especially to Crimiduck and DragShot) – I realize that only stories with considerable clout get flamed, so I _should_ be left with polite commenters and silent judgers, but still – this, it's a rambling soup of words. The humour is forced, the tone is inconsistent, the characterization is flat and the content is unoriginal (idk if you've noticed the random in-game voice responses). I butcher everything I touch, but not quite badly enough to earn the "so bad it's good" status.

But even so, as the creator, I cannot help but feel a sense of pride in the little monstrosity I have spawned. (I think it's called the IKEA effect.)

Such is the strangeness of life. (Also, the fact that I care more about these fictional characters than I care about some real people in my life, but that's another kettle of fish.)

Anyway, I tried to (mis)use slang from the Australian Slang Dictionary. Real Australians may laugh and/or weep at this.

In this installment, we plunge into post-Mann vs. Machine hijinks.

* * *

 **Sniper's Snipe Hunt**

It was dawn. The pale sun had cast its first watery rays on the desert, warning the desert creatures back to their burrows because once the sun's up, the desert gets hot as f&%$. Like, enough to sublime ice cubes.

The Sniper was in his camper, brewing a pot of coffee for the day ahead. Soldier had gone on a mini-rampage following the loss of the intelligence the previous week, and had only just begun to calm down.

Sniper wasn't hiding. Shut up. It just wasn't prudent to stay inside. Soldier could get very messy if he wanted to.

Almost on cue, there was the sound of an explosion from the base.

The beans percolated slowly in the -

"SNIPER! OH GOD HELP"

Sniper started, lifted the corner of the curtain cautiously, and peered outside. He had heard much inarticulate shouting as of late, and this particular shout seemed to have been issued from the mouth of the Scout. He could hear something that went like

"SNIPER YOU ILLEGITIMATE CHILD OPEN UP FOR THE LOVE OF THE JUDEOCHRISTIAN DEITY"

and

" _SNIPERRRRRR!"_

intermingled with what sounded like blubbering, as well as a persistent banging on the door.

Sniper closed the blinds and turned up his radio to a station playing music just loud enough to drown out the knocking, but not enough to disturb his train of thought. He ignored the faint yelling outside, and it soon ceased. He smiled.

His walkie-talkie suddenly crackled. "SNIPER! I SAW YOU! DON'T IGNORE ME!"

Sniper sighed and picked up the walkie-talkie.

"What is it, mate?" he shouted cheerily over the music.

"SNIPERYOUGOTTAHELPMEROBOTSOLLYKILLEDEVERY-"

"Whoa, what?"

He opened the door to the camper.

The Scout was dressed in red, although not the usual red of the REDs' uniforms. This red was not red dye. It seemed to have resulted from a blend of fifteen different human organs mashed up into gristle and sprinkled generously in an aerosol over the Scout's shirt, duffel bag, hat, headset, and terrified face.

Sniper blinked.

"What happened?"

"ROBOTSOLLYKILLEDEVERY-"

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part," Sniper said.

Scout gulped, shifting nervously from foot to foot, and explained at a slower, if still incomprehensible, pace. "RobotSollycametothebaseandkilledeveryoneandthey'renotrespawningandIDON'TWANNADIE!"

"Mkay, mate."

"'Mkay'? What do you mean, 'mkay'!? A ROBOT INFILTRATED OUR BASE AND KILLED EVERYONE!"

"I always knew this day would come. Man pitted against machine, finally forced to confront the reality...of the horror...of their own creations." Sniper slowed down his speech and looked off meaningfully into the distance for exactly five seconds for maximum dramatic effect. "Our teammates probably aren't dead, anyway. Respawn still works on the weekends. Just takes longer." He looked at the Scout. "Why are _you_ the only one alive, anyway?"

"I ran."

"So you turned tail and fled, huh?"

"I did not! It was a _tactical retreat_!" The Scout had been bouncing up and down with nervous energy, and was now practically doublejumping. "Are you going to help me or not?!"

"Alright. Come in."

Sniper had never regretted a decision so quickly in his life. Well, maybe that one time with the alligator and the jar of Jarate – but this one was _up there_ with the rest of his regretted decisions.

"After we lost the briefcase, Solly totally lost his –" Scout drank another full mug of coffee in two seconds flat – "mind, right? So Doc puts him on some crazy knock-out medicine, and then we think that's that! But then, we see his shadow in the door of some room, so we go in to look, right? And it wasn't him! It was some giant metal robot thingy armed with a rocket launcher! It killed Medic on the spot!" Scout paused. "I wonder why it didn't aim for me first…"  
"They're probably programmed to target the most important classes first," Sniper observed. Scout glared at him.

"Sorry."

"It's all Solly's fault! If he hadn't gone on about killing Nazis and slapping hippies for so long, we would've found out that that BLU scumbag of a Spy pretending to be me _was_ the BLU Spy…pretending…to be me…and none of this would've happened!"

"Robot attacks have nothing to do with Soldier's possible mental illnesses."

"Yeah…funny thing, actually…the robot looked exactly like what I always thought a robot version of Soldier would look like."

"Huh," Sniper said. "Curiouser and curiouser. I didn't think the robots would show up so soon."

It took a second for the realization to sink in, but sink in it did. "What?!" shrieked the RED Scout. "YOU KNEW ABOUT THIS?!"

"Yeah. Weren't you at the orientation meeting?"

"What orientation meeting?"

*cue flashback accentuated with mellifluous whole tone scales*

 _Time: only a few short days after BLU Spy's triumph. Summoned to a ceasefire meeting for reasons unknown, the BLU Heavy, Medic, Engineer, Pyro and Scout meet with the RED Demoman, Spy, Soldier and Sniper. Miss Pauling shows up, bringing news of Redmond and Blutarch Mann's deaths. They watch Saxton Hale's message (taped while he wrestles a yeti). After being unceremoniously fired and rehired in the space of ten minutes, they prepare to face off against the metallic menace of Gray Mann's robot army._

*end flashback in epic guitar riffs*

The Scout stood, stock-still, a twitch developing underneath his left eye. "And you four numbnuts didn't think to tell the rest of us about this?"

"Nope."

"WELL, YOU MIGHT HAVE JUST GOTTEN THE ENTIRE TEAM KILLED! AND NOW WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"Bloody – it's just one robot, innit? We should be able to take it."

There was more than one robot.

"Bloody hell...those bludgers're fast, aren't they?" the Sniper said, dumbfounded. The base was practically swarming with the mindless, steel-plated critters.

The Scout responded most eloquently with a drawn-out, desolate wail.

 **SIX HUNDRED SIXTY-FIVE RESPAWNS LATER – on a hill somewhere**

"Alright, alright, this time, can you not, you know, shoot me in the head? That'd be great!"

"Well, you keep buggering off willy-nilly _into my crosshairs_! Maybe next time, instead of running straight into the swarm _where the robots are densest,_ you could actually think things through instead of _being a total dipstick_? And stop stealing the money from my kills!" (Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention. The robots drop money when they're destroyed. It's a nice perk.)

"Oh yeah! Okay! Blame everything on me! Excuse me, mister got-our-whole-team-murdered-and-blew-it-off-with-a-flippant-remark-about-respawn – " Scout took a few seconds to regain his breath. "– and-is-now-assigning-all-the-blame-to-me! You said they were gonna respawn! Where are they?"

"I don't know, hiding from you because you're so loud?" yelled Sniper. His insults were deteriorating, he noted, but he couldn't care less. "I don't know why you're blaming _me_! Why not Solly or Engie or Demo or th' spook?"

"Oh please! They're not here! I am blaming you because it is _convenient_ to _project_ my lifelong frustrations and insecurities onto you!"

"That's oddly specific!"

"Yeah! I know! I'm kind of losing it here!"

"Wait! Is that Demo?" Sniper pointed wildly in the distance. "See? I didn't get anyone killed!"

It was – the Scotsman was clambering over a distant knoll with his grenade launcher. It was a welcome sight – a faint beacon of hope – out there was a fellow creature, with warm, feeling flesh instead of cold, shining, passionless –

"Aaaaand he's down. What's your plan now, numbnuts?"

"He's probably got the wobbly boot on," the Sniper responded, harassed. "But look where 'e came from! The others must be hiding out over there! That pack of wusses!"

"That's it. I'm joining the BLU team!"

"What?"

"Our team won't help us! What else am I supposed to do?"

"Well -" Sniper glanced behind them, at the milling masses of machinery. "Wait for me!"

 **AT THE BLU BASE**

The RED team sans Scout and Sniper was sitting across from the BLU team, congregated in the BLU War Room. The tension could be cut with a knife – but not a dinky knife like a butter knife. A REAL knife. Like a machete or something.

Negotiations had been in process for about two hours, although no consensus could be achieved, due mainly to the current existence of the two Soldiers.

"You lily-livered waste of skin! You're a disgrace to the uniform! Your father was a guinea pig and your mother smelt of raspberries!"

"Oh yeah? Why are you wearing COMMUNIST RED CLOTHING, THEN? Besides, red is so tacky! It's one errant bleaching away from PINK!"

"What're you gonna do? Dye me?"

"Would you take your firmly lodged head out of your arse and listen to reason fer once?" the BLU Sniper exclaimed in exasperation.

"Ha! Zat's funny. A Soldier, listening to reason? Ze only thing he listens to are ze voices in his 'ead! Und maybe ze audiobook file of Sun Tzu's _The Art of War_ on loop."

"Sun Bin's was better," muttered BLU Scout.

"BLASPHEMY! You know nothing about the intricacies of military strategy! 孫子 is the Supreme General!" both Soldiers shouted at once. They glared at each other.

"Is your medic always so insensitive?" the Engineer furtively asked BLU Engie. "Why is his accent so thick all the time? D'ya reckon your Soldier's crazier than ours? Is his name really Jane Doe?"

"No, that's a furphy," replied the BLU Sniper, while sharpening his kukri. "Medic's name is Jane. Solly's Janette. We call 'im Jane for short."

"Shut up! You're more of a designated marksman anyway!" BLU Medic trailed off, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.

"What's a designated marksman?"

"Well, they're similar to snipers. The terminology, it's mostly bureaucracy. They provide mid-range support and accurate fire – they're still a support, but less specialized, and they mingle with the fireteam. They are marksmen, and they're sometimes called snipers by dolts who don't know their dates from a hole in the fourth wall."

"Huh. So they're pretty much the same thing as a sniper."

"Yeah. Their gun sights have lower magnification, though."

"Back to the subject at hand," cut in the RED Spy. "Let's rename the proposal to something less inflammatory, say 'RED and BLU merger'. 'You all suck eggs' is not, how do you say, cool."

The members of the BLU team all admitted that that wasn't, in fact, cool. They looked out the window, where the RED base was currently being teabagged by a giant robot Demoknight.

"So it's a deal?"  
"Yes." They shook on it.

"SON OF A CUSSING CUSS WORD! WE ARE NOT GOING TO COOPERATE WITH THESE SLIMY BLU LADIES!"

The response to the RED Soldier's outburst was unanimous: Archimedes flew over and obligingly pooped on his head, batting him with his wings, followed by the rest of Medic's doves. Five birds in total smacked him in the face before he reacted.

"THAT'S IT! I AM GOING TO WRITE A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF BIRDS AND FREEDOM AND SUE YOUR ASSES FOR TAX EVASION!"

Responses to that statement was more mixed, with "You're not the full quid, are you?", "Shut up, Soldier!" and "Aww, you gonna cry?" being among the most prevalent.

"MY TEAR DUCTS WERE SOLDERED SHUT TWO DECADES AGO!" With that, Soldier picked up Archimedes' scattered feathers and tried in vain to throw them at the various offenders.

"Gentlemen! Let us stay on topic, shall we?"

At this time, the RED Sniper and Scout burst in, panting from exertion.

"All right! You cowardly sneaks better have a good exc – What in the devil is going on here?"

"Ve ah one big family now!" yelled the BLU Medic. "I am going to stuff you mit baboon organs, ja!"

"What?"

"Sniper! Scout! We thought you were dead!" the RED Demoman exclaimed. "Especially you, me boy."

"What did I tell you? The robots only go for the important classes," the RED Engineer laughed. "If anyone was to survive, it'd be the Scout. Sniper is a surprise, though."

"Hey!"

"We've merged," explained Engineer, ignoring the Scout. "We're gonna face these mean metal mother hubbards as one big team. I know we haven't consulted you two yet, but we thought that was the most pragmatic solution."

"I DIDN'T!"

"Shut your trap, Soldier," the Engineer said jovially.

The BLU Pyro tugged on the RED Spy's sleeve, causing him to flinch, a rare reaction (to say the least) for the Spy. Pyro whispered into RED Spy's ear, much against the latter's wishes. Spy reluctantly nodded. "Pyro here has prepositioned that we rename our merger into something less, as he put it, mind-numbingly boring. How does –" he sighed. "How does 'Let's Make Purple' sound?"

"Makes sense. Red and blue does make purple," remarked the RED Scout.

A murmur of assent went around the War Room. RED Soldier had calmed down and was sticking feathers back into Archimedes. The two Demomen were swapping scrumpy bottles and laughing raucously. The Medics were comparing surgical techniques on a semiwilling RED Heavy. Sniper looked from side to side; daring himself to wake up from this horrible nightmare where robots ran on money and RED and BLU didn't fight and the universe didn't make sense anymore.

"Alright", muttered Sniper. "Let's make purple."

~~~FIN~~~

Wasn't that nice? They're all working together now. It's a Smissmas miracle! I'm thinking of starting a spin-off series dedicated to the finer details of RED/BLU cooperation titled "Let's Make Purple". Should I do it? If no, blink twice. If yes, blink no.


	6. Engineer's Ingenuity

Notes of the Author persuasion:

Well, hello again. It's always such a pleasure.

Soon, I will have no more time to update so often. I am making the most of the little holiday time I have left. It's slipping away as you read.

(I try to vary the style depending on which class is being showcased – the Pyro is accompanied by many colourful descriptions, Medic is derpy with a serious side, the Demoman is ensconced in a dreamlike sort of surreal drunkenness, the Soldier is...non sequitur, and the Sniper is _almost_ normal but gets interrupted by weirdness. I don't know if that's working.) Anyway, this time, let's meet the Engineer.

(Not all Texans are scientifically or otherwise illiterate. It's an unfair stereotype to be sure. No better is it presented than in the impressive credentials the Engineer sports. 11 PhDs? Very impressive.)

* * *

 **Engineer's Ingenuity**

The Engineer was from Bee Hive, Texas, a fact immediately discernible from his birth certificate (and not his accent, which was actually kind of ambiguous). He was raised on gold ol' fashioned Southern values and a steady diet of research journals. If Wikipedia had existed in his time, he would one of the experts bemoaning the lack of competence on the site, adding DOIs and {{cleanup}} templates on each article about technology. But it didn't, so pfffbbbbt. They had to go to the LIBRARY! (cue gasps). Sucks for them.

The Engineer was a gentleman, and not just any gentleman, a _Southern_ gentleman. A good ol' boy who held doors open and addressed "ma'am" and "miss" to the correct age demographics and knew how to use a napkin. He also wore a bright yellow hat. Not sure how that makes him better, but hat-based elitism was a staple of the time, so it's probably worth a mention.

The Engineer made good use of his education, making prototypes and testing and refining all sorts of geegaws and thingamabobs. They were revolutionary, centuries before their time: teleporters that nearly instantaneously transported matter from one node to another, requiring a grasp of quantum mechanics not available yet to humankind, machines that could extend a person's lifetime indefinitely, the first artificial immortality, and a self-icing cupcake. Of all of these, the last one was the only one he bothered to keep secret. It was obvious that that was too arcane, too special, too important to share with others. That's why no one's heard of it. Until now. You're welcome.

Some of those thingamabobs happened to kill people, though, and in almost comically unnecessary, over-the-top ways. People think Medic has ethical problems. Wait until you see Engie's rap sheet.

So, to avoid the potential legal backlash and ethical board hearings, he sold his designs to TF Industries. They were great at killing people and getting away with it.

But no worries. He was just another good ol' boy, that's all. And he was cordial and polite, and worn to the absolute bone by his new role as conflict resolutions guy for the new merger, the "Let's Make Purple" initiative.

"Pyro, don't pour kerosene onto former-BLU Spy's head, he doesn't like that."

"Mrrrph!"

"I don't care if you're "jus' bein' friendly", Pyro, he thinks you're gonna roast him and so do we." He picked up one of his well-worn chemistry books, and flipped to a section on torrefaction. "C'mere, Pyro, put down that match and come look at the pretty pitchers."

On the opposite side of the room, the former-BLU Engineer was having the same problems. "All I'm sayin', Solly, is that we've made a commitment, and a damn smart one too, if you want to live! If you don't cooperate, you have a snowball's chance in hell of gettin' away from these robots."

The response was about the same every time. Unprintable.

So after about two days of this, the two Engies decided they needed a break. So, at the crack of dawn, they both sneaked and snuck out of their beds, headed to their shared "Purple" laboratory/workshop to do some good, mind-cleansing work, and arrived at the entrance at the exact same moment.

Well. That was awkward.

"Heh. Good mornin'. I was jus' fixin' to go do some...fixin'."

"Me too."

They both tugged at their collars, hemmed and hawed for a bit, and cleared their throats, both looking rather ill at ease.

"Aw, this is ridiculous. We're one team now. We're mature enough to share a workshop."

"Yeah. We're not like the others, itchin' for a fight."

None of them made a move.

"What were you gonna tackle first?" said the former-BLU.

"I was thinkin' maybe the Dispenser over there."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Ah...nothing, actually." A tumbleweed rolled across a desert somewhere, and caught on fire, which made it approximately 100.64 times more exciting than what was going on in the workshop right this moment.

"It's slower than cream rising on buttermilk."

"What?"

"It's like molasses going uphill in winter."

"Pardon?"

"It's really slow."

"Oh."

A full minute passed. The clock, ticking insistently in the background, seemed to get louder with every passing second.

"I see. Well, mah name's Dell Conagher. You can call me Dell."

"Nice ta meet ya, pardner. The name's N.G."

"Come again?"

"Mah name's N.G."

"Well sure, but we're past that code-naming business, aren't we? Come on, tell me your name."

"My name is N.G."

"I know you're name's Engie! _My_ nickname's Engie! What's your _real_ name?"

"N.G. It's N.G.," insisted the former-BLU Engineer, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

"Quit messing with me and tell me your damn name!"

The amiable, soft-spoken Texan snapped with the suddenness of a crocodile performing its death roll and roared, "MY NAME IS NELL GONAGHER AND I GO BY N.G.!"

Engie blinked.

"Unusual name, Gonagher," he managed.

"Thank you, it was my grandfather's."

Somewhat shaken by the incident, Engineer decided not to pursue his line of inquiry into why his counterpart's name was so similar to his own.

"Which transdimensional [pseudoscientific gobbledygook] [nonsense I made up] do you use?"

"I use the polarizing negative-field [technobabble] [you can tell I've never opened a physics textbook] Allen wrench."

"Ha, so do I!" chuckled Dell. "I remember doing mah doctoral dissertation for applied physics. Wow, was that a doozy! I was visualizin' vectors and Planck constants in mah sleep."

"Same here. When I did mah dual Masters and doctorate, I was mixin' up my graphene and my graphemes at that point, if you know what I mean."

"Where did you go to school?"

"MIT," replied Nell, because no one has ever heard of any other famous technical institute, and thoroughly researching the history of higher education schools renowned for their engineering departments is for the birds.

"So did I!" Dell looked sideways at Nell. "Say, I never saw you around! You can't be much younger - or older'n me."

"Well, I went on a lot of exchanges and I kept mostly to myself," explained Nell. "I was busy with all my inventions. See, I had all these ideas." His eyes misted over and he sighed fondly. "Those were the days."

"Those were the days," echoed Dell. "Say, we really are two peas in a pod, aren't we? Sometimes I think ol' Redmond and Blutarch did this on purpose. Found doppelgangers so they could oppose each other to the last. They were twins, weren't they? Twins do think alike. Hired the exact same number of mercenaries even though hiring more people is certainly within their power and would tip things in their favour."

"I wondered that myself," replied Nell, fastening a wedge in place. "How I see it, I'm jus' glad they didn't try escalatin' the numbers. I mean, one day it's nine versus nine and the next it's two hundred even. Probably had a tacit agreement between them: you have nine and I have nine, let's keep it that way. Maybe ol' Blutarch and Redmond weren't quite as stupid as we're told."

They both burst out laughing.

"Who'm I kiddin'? They're dingbats. Were, sorry. God rest their souls or something like that."

As the hours wore on, they were still no closer to fixing whatever problem there was with the teleporter, because there was no problem with it. At this point, they were just dismantling it and putting it back together. Anything. Anything at all to escape being the blasted mediator for a group of nine psychopathic-tendency-exhibiting, grudge-and-not-hand-holding, blood-and-maybe-some-other-things-lusting mercenaries. This was a welcome break for the both of them: they rarely got to (forgive the pun) talk shop about their work with _the others_ : Sniper and Spy had no interest, Soldier and Scout had no brains, Medic and Heavy had no patience, Demo was always drunk, and Pyro...

Well, Pyro was Pyro. Pyro guarded the Sentries. Pyro asked no questions.

Their conversation lasted long into the afternoon, comparing tools, specifications, and how long it took them to strangle a man with their Gunslingers. The more they spoke, the more they found that they had an astounding list of things in common - alma mater, alma pater, almond platters, and llama hatters - not to mention their album water, alum splatters and Allum key slatters (forget the latter, it doesn't matter). Talk began to turn to the nature of extraordinary coincidences, each trying to outdo the other in outlandishness.

"Two lotteries, a pig, and a diamond ring in one day? That's nothing. Statistically speaking, it has to happen once in a while. Did you hear about this one? So there are these identical twins, right, separated from their mother at birth. At birth. And after thirty-nine years, they meet each other, and they find out they like the same songs, eat the same cereal, drive the same car, smoke the same cigarettes, went to the same beaches, named their dog the same damn thing - it was like finding a clone of themselves, 'cept not as creepy. They couldn't even tell their own voices apart."

"All right. You beat me. That story was...surprisingly apt for this situation...almost as if we were living the very same thing."

"Ha! That's ridiculous...almost more ridiculous than thi- I mean my story..."

They both stared at each other.

"My favourite food is bacon!"

"I've always hated the colour yellow!"

"I had a dog named Sparky and we buried him under the apple tree in our backyard!"

Prolonged stares, becoming a bit panicked.

"We can't be identical twins separated at birth, can we?"

"No. Of course not. What's the chance of that?"

"That's almost as silly as us being clones of each other!"

They both laughed nervously, not taking their eyes off each other.

They decided to settle this matter right then and there, not left in the past and somewhere else, because that wouldn't make any sense. They both quickly shuffled around, gathering pens and paper to calculate the actual probability of how likely was it that they were identical twins. After all the deviations were squared and summed and sweated over, the graph was right in front of them:

VERY

"That just ain't right."

"Ha. This just shows a possibility, not the absolute, 100% truth. Oh look, you forgot t' carry the two."

They hefted the two to its proper place, and rewrote the calculations.

The new likelihood was:

EXTREMELY

"That still isn't right."

They fiddled around a bit more.

The result:

FACE IT YOU'RE TWINS

"Why are we even doing this?"

"I don't know, you started it."

"Should we do a DNA test?"

"No, how would that help us? It'll just say the same thing."

They looked at each other. Tears welled up behind their goggles. They ripped them and their helmets off, and they threw their arms around each other.

"I'm so sorry about all the times I've called you a no-good redneck son of a silly person!"

"I'm sorry for sending the Spy to sap your Dispenser and to telefrag you fifty times in a row!"

"I'm sorry about the time I stole your favourite socket wrench, modified one of Pyro's flamethrowers into an oversized oxyacetylene torch, melted it down, and poured it down your throat as you watched!"

They broke apart. "Maybe we should stop apologizing to each other."

Just then, the Scout burst into the room. "HELPENGIEYOUGOTTASTOPTHEM!"

"Wait, stop who from what? Slow down, boy!"

"THEY'REKILLINGEACHOTHERANDTHEYSAIDI'MNEXT!" Scout yelled, hyperventilating. "What have you been DOING?!"

The Engineers sighed, picked their helmets from off the ground and set them firmly on their heads. They gathered the spare parts of the teleporter with exaggerated movements. They purposefully placed their tools in their proper place. They hefted their toolboxes onto their shoulders in slow motion. Scout facepalmed.

Finally, the Engineers shared a knowing glance, and nodded authoritatively. Scout nearly wept in relief.

"Take us to them, son," they said in unison.

After what they had been through, they were ready.

~~~End :3~~~

I have complied to the blinkings of no and began the Purple story right quick. For clarification, this story will still address post-MVM madness, but it will focus more on blips of the featured class's life instead of actual robot fighting. So that's how these two stories differ. They're not actually going to be the same. I promise.


	7. Heavy's Behoovement

Notations by and from the Author:

First of all, apologies are in order.

1\. To the haters: sorry for updating. Please find it in your hearts tolerate the existence of this story.

2\. To the casual enthusiasts: sorry for not updating. As penance, I give you extra long chapter. I'm trying out a new style or generating humour, one that aspires to be what Alexander Pope described as "using a vast force to lift a feather".

You may have noticed the inconsistent double/single quote and hyphen/endash usage in my stories. Does this brazen misuse of punctuation instill within you a deep, ferocious rage – a fury most primal, boundless and ungoverned? Does it make you want to tear at the roots of your hair, crack the screen of your device, and reach through cyberspace and time to throttle the perpetrator of such an affront?

No?

Well, damn. I suck at trolling.

Heavy's portrayal in fan works does tend to lean towards the mouth-breathing idiot. Perhaps I could shatter some stereotypes and restore respect for the character. Or I could just parody it. Yeah, I'll do that.

* * *

 **Heavy's Behoovement**

Nightfall.

Heavy was thinking.

The others were surprised to learn that he was capable of such an act. Of course, they knew better than to say it to his face, or they would lose theirs pretty quickly.

This particular day, which had been a Gregorian weekday in which the Earth made one revolution around its axis, was absolutely identical to all the other Gregorian weekdays in which the Earth makes one revolution around its axis. But the following day was pretty darn important.

It was Sasha's birthday.

He was mulling over the possibilities. Should he organize an impromptu celebration at the last minute? No – that was tacky. He hadn't had the time ever since the robots arrived uninvited on their doorstep, but they avoided their patio, so they were grateful. Should he pen a sonnet in which he praised Sasha's features in flawless verse? No – Sasha didn't speak Russian, and Heavy didn't have a firm enough grasp of Sasha's native English. There was one language that all miniguns understood, though: Dog Latin. A letter in extravagant Dog Latin prose! Yes. That would be Sasha's birthday present.

He went to Medic's desk, taking a pad of paper, a stub of a pencil, and an eraser. He brought them back to his room, and began to write.

While he was considering his verb choices, the Scout popped up behind. "Yo, Heavy! Whatcha doin'?"

Heavy ignored him.

Scout tapped him on the head. "Hello?"

Heavy erased a gerundive and wrote in the neuter form of the corresponding noun.

"Hey! Are you even listening to me?"

"Go away, leetle Scout," growled the Heavy. He found himself wishing that they had made a leash for the energetic, overenthusiastic Bostonian (not the racehorse). Perhaps they could even get him to fill out a permission form in triplicate in order to speak. But unfortunately, the Scout did not know what triplicate meant, so it was no use.

The former-BLU Medic had offered to "fix" him, but knowing Medic, that probably meant more trouble than it was worth.

Scout didn't budge. Heavy sighed.

"What?"

"I'm bored," complained the Scout.

"So?"

"So? Everyone else is asleep except for you and Engie and Engie's banging away at his machines in the workshop."

"So?" Heavy enunciated.

"So I came to you. Whatcha doing?"

"None of your business."

Using Heavy's sizeable shoulder as leverage, Scout raised himself up and peered over it. "Is that a love letter for your minigun?"  
Heavy was shocked. How did he know?

"You drew your minigun with a bunch of little hearts around it."

Oh.

"What language is that?"

"Dog Latin."

"Dog Latin? What kind of language is that?"

Heavy paused dramatically for a flashback.

When Heavy was learning English, his tutelage was partially overseen by an enthusiastic linguistic purist and prescriptivist, who insisted on purging all words of Latin descent from the Anglo-Saxon version of English. Heavy tried his best to learn about the Latin influence on archaic English. However, the pool of Latin teachers was very small, so Heavy had to resort to finding weird people in alleyways.

His first, and only, lesson went a little like this:

"Raydicks mallum."

Heavy looked at him. "Rah-dix mal-oom?" he pronounced carefully, following his guide to Latin pronunciation.

"That's what I said."

It wasn't.

The stranger that doubled as his teacher took another swig out of the bottle he carried and explained. "' _Radix malum'_. It's Latin for 'bad radish'."

Heavy was confused. _Radix_ _malorum est cupiditas_ meant "greed is the root of all evil" – nothing to do with radishes. He could understand the confusion: _Radix_ was root; radish was a root vegetable. _Malum_ meant evil; an extreme of bad – found in many modern English words: malicious, malignant, malingerer, and malaria (this derived from Old Italian, in turn derived from _mal-_ ). This he was sure of.

"I thought it meant root. Root of evil." He paused. "All evil," he added as an afterthought.

"No, dummy, it means _bad radish_. Do you see the word "of" in there? Do you see _four_ words? No. There are two words, radix which is radish and malum which means bad. Like "malware". You know the word "malware"? Of course not. Malware means fashion, but _bad_ fashion. Dumbass."

Heavy had no way to find out whether or not he was correct, as the stranger in the alleyway proceeded to choke on the fish bone he put in his beer. Heavy then attempted the Heimlich maneuver, and that was all she wrote.

Ever since then, Heavy had only been able to use Dog Latin instead of actual Latin.

"Hello? Heavy? Heavy!" Scout waved a hand in front of his face. Heavy snapped out of the flashback.

"Get out."

"But -"

"I will crush tiny skull and nonexistent brain inside if you do not get out now."

Scout's nonexistent brain wisely decided that it wanted to perpetuate its nonexistence. He quickly shuffled out of the room, muttering under his breath.

Heavy continued to write as the world darkened into deep slumber. The moon hung large and glorious in the sky, like a bright jewel among the dark folds of night.

Soon, his masterpiece was complete.

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In eu aliquam magna. Fusce lobortis mi nunc, non commodo odio lobortis ac. Vivamus quis leo in velit hendrerit hendrerit et vel erat. Aliquam tincidunt ut massa a consectetur. Quisque viverra massa enim, sed ultricies elit accumsan eu. Cras auctor urna ac risus pellentesque gravida. Curabitur semper, sapien in aliquam molestie, enim diam vestibulum urna, mollis fringilla metus dolor quis mi.

Cras laoreet nisi in massa eleifend, nec tincidunt lacus pretium. Nam eget blandit est. Praesent a lacus orci. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque bibendum volutpat quam, sed convallis turpis sagittis ac. Nam ac egestas felis. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Donec mauris tellus, pharetra non mattis sed, tempus sed enim."

He smiled. It was perfect.

The next day, the teams convened for a friendly meeting. Well, it was friendly the same way friendly fire was friendly. They were to swap reports of where Gray Mann was directing his robot army, so they could travel separately to those locations and secure the Mann Co. buildings.

Needless to say (but we'll say it anyway), the Soldiers were safely locked away in a trunk during the proceedings.

Nearing the end of their talks, former-BLU Medic cleared his throat. "As a token of goodvill, I vould like to present you a gift. I have been vorking on performing brain transfers, und vit all zese robots around, I managed to create vone…vit a brain!"

One Pyro fainted. Everyone else gaped in shock, except the Engineers, who immediately asked, "What kind of transformer did you use to connect the brain stem's neurons to the wiring?" at the same time.

"I present to you…Larry! I'm vorking on the name."

Former-BLU Medic stepped aside, and Larry the Robot sauntered theatrically over to the former RED team. They stared at him warily. Larry extended a mechanical hand, palm up, and promptly proceeded to produce a pie out of nowhere and slammed it into former-BLU Medic's face.

He held out his arms. "Ta-da!"

*cue montage music, preferably Yakety Sax*

 _Soldier laughs as Larry juggles a Scout and a Pyro with one hand. Larry claps as Heavy reads his poem for Sasha. Both teams square dance, then Conga together. Demoman falls over._

 _Heavy laughs. Larry reaches out to take Sasha from Heavy so he could join in. Heavy slaps the robot's hands away. Larry, insulted, makes a grab for Sasha. With his freakish cyborg strength, he succeeds in taking Sasha. Heavy's eyes widen in shock. Slowly, very slowly, the robot begins to crush Sasha between his hands…_

*end montage music abruptly*

Sasha shrieked in protest, her metallic sides crumpling and folding under the extortive pressure of the sentient automaton's hands.

Time seemed to slow around them.

With a roar, Heavy charged forward and wrested poor Sasha's mutilated body from the cold fingers of the robot with a brain. He grabbed its face, planted a hand on its shoulder, and twisted its head off its body, ripping out the crude spinal cord. He mashed the head in his fist. The others watched in horror as he ripped out a couple of bolts and ate them, for no apparent reason.

"He killed it! He murdered it!" shrieked the former-BLU Medic. He stalked up to the Engineer, waving a writ in his face. "HE'S A MURDERER!"

"Well, actually," opined the Engineer, "that technically was a justifiable homicide. It was clearly a crime of passion, and manslaughter at worst. The best you can push for is second-degree murder with good lawyers and a pliant jury."

Former-BLU Medic marched up to Heavy, quivering with fury. "How could you? We had a montage together!" he wailed.

Heavy slowly rose, carrying the mangled shards of Sasha in his arms, and fixed Medic with a glare that could melt through steel beams.

"That thing killed Sasha. You are lucky I do not kill you."

Heavy turned his back on the spluttering former-BLU and lumbered to the base.

The following week, the two teams decided it would be best to keep to their own bases. The Demoman, Engineer, Medic, Pyro, Sniper and Soldier hid out in the warehouse behind the supply room to give Heavy space to grieve in peace. And also so he didn't take it out on them. But mostly the first thing.

To pass the time, they drank Demo's scrumpy, spit out Demo's disgusting scrumpy, drank it again because they had no other alcohol, and shared deep, heartfelt stories about their childhoods.

Soldier did not have many warm, personal memories, but he did have many heartwrenching tales about his life during WWII. Not that he didn't enjoy the war. In fact, he LOVED it. Even if he was a few years late in joining, it still didn't stop him from going on about all his...fellow soldiers...and the intestines he had to stuff into them. Not necessarily theirs.

"…And then he had the gall to tell me that he didn't need two colons! Well, I shoved another jejunum right into that bastard to show him who was boss!"

"Achtually," said the Medic, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with his gloved fingers because screw dignity. "You can haff two jejuni if you connect them just right."

"Well, of course ya'd wanta put more viscera than a man needs into him," remarked the Sniper. "What with your tryin' to put baboon uteruses –"

"Uteri! I vas tryink to see if I could recreate _uterus didelphys_ in a male member of the shpeecies!"

"'Uteruses' is a perfectly acceptable plural form. And that has no practical application outside of satisfying your morbid curiosity!"

"Stay in flipping character, you dipstick," hissed the Engineer.

"You don't usually talk like that," reminded the Sniper.

Engineer frowned. "Oh. Sorry 'bout that." He looked towards the small, high window. "I wonder how Heavy's doin'. He really did love that gun of his."

"Ah, yes," Medic said sadly, licking the remains of the peanut butter off his gloves. "How I wish my Ubercharge could make ze affections invulnerable along with ze body."

"Who needs invulnerability when you fight like a real man – with pain, and suffering, and pain? Pain does not hurt. Pain is weakness leaving the body!" Soldier yelled.

"You're not helping," said Engineer.

"I think I have a solution," said Medic, dabbing his lips delicately with his sleeve. "Perhaps I could give him a lobotomy…"

"A lobotomy!" Engineer exclaimed, eyes widening in shock. "No!"

"Oh, I didn't mean Heavy. I meant Soldier."

"Nobody in their right mind would think that that's any different."

"It vas a legitimate attempt to help! You are a heel!" snapped Medic in exasperation.

"I never did understand using body parts as insults," mused the Engineer. "It is a reduction of sorts, but it isn't very clever."

"Don't be such a round ligament of the uterus," retorted the Medic.

" _No_ lobotomies. Heartbreak is a fact of life, and so is Soldier. You might as well destroy them along with their personalities. Is that what you want?" Engineer looked sternly at Medic.

"No," muttered the Medic. He kicked one of the empty cardboard boxes in frustration.

"Ow!" yelled the box.

"Sorry, Talkin' Box," said the Demoman, hiccupping. "We're jus' passing though." He fell over.

"Scout? Are you hiding in a box?" asked the Engineer.

"I'm not hiding! I wanted to see how high I could jump. I landed in a box and it fell down."

"You know how high you can jump. It's freakishly high."

"Okay, fine! I was hidin' from Heavy. You know he locked me in a closet for six hours for borrowing the intel once? Who knows what he'd do now?"

Another box thumped. "Would you stop your incessant whining?"

"Spy? What are you doin' here? We haven't seen you all chap-day!"

"I was perfecting my new technique of infiltrating enemy bases by disabling their field of vision with a state-of-the-art corrugated fiberboard obfuscation device when the drunken oaf of a Demoman taped up my box."

"Why didn't you just cut yourself out with your knife?" asked the Scout.

Spy was silent for a moment too long.

"You're hiding, too, aren't you?"

Spy elbowed him through the box.

"Don't hide behind your façade of affected indignation," Scout said loftily, shamelessly reading off the psychology book he had with him.

"You are insufferable."

"That's just your projection speaking."

"That's enough, boys. Get out of those boxes."

"I don't wanna come out yet. I have this book in here about Freud and it's awesome."

"You can read above a third grade level?"

"Shut up!"

And thus, they bickered on.

Back at the base, Heavy mourned for Sasha. The others questioned the propriety of their love, whispering behind their backs, casting furtive glances in their direction every time they went out together. Holding a photograph of his beloved, he thought of all the battles he had attended, Sasha, always faithful, at his side. He remembered fondly the warmth of their enemies' arterial blood spraying in his face, Sasha's bullets embedded in their sides…and more recently, the sound of metal screaming against metal. He rhapsodized mentally about her gleaming flanks, her sultry purr, how eagerly she yielded to his touch, and his heart welled with grief, though nothing could consume the yawning chasm in which Sasha once resided.

Then, he remembered the words of a teacher of philosophy he met in another alley after the untimely demise of his Latin teacher.

 _"What is identity? You may think you know what it is, my boy, but consider the following: If you build a ship, sail it for years and years, never replacing it, components will be bound to need replacement. If you replace the hull, the stern, the deck and the mast piece by piece, you'll eventually replace the entire ship with new parts. If you saved the pieces, then use the pieces you saved to build a new ship, which one is the original?"_

Heavy slowly stood up. He looked at his picture of Sasha. He had repaired her day after day of toil and wear, and didn't have the heart to throw away the pieces. He felt torn, more torn than he had during his brief fling with Natascha. If he put together the pieces, wouldn't that be the same as having Sasha again? The new gun would be Sasha's clone, twin down to the firing pin - but she would be _made_ of Sasha! But it wouldn't be her. It could never be her.

Or would it be her?

He spent the rest of the day tormenting himself, pondering the philosophical conundrum while Sasha's parts lay under the white sheet he took from the infirmary.

After several revolutionary reconsiderations of the treatises treating the subject matter, he decided that he didn't care. He would do anything to get Sasha back.

He gingerly peeled back the sheet, flinching at the horrifically gnarled mass of metal that was once Sasha. He cradled it gently, forcing himself to touch the mangled steel and peel apart the useable pieces. His heart twisted every time the metal snapped.

Next, he took out every piece of Sasha he had saved up. Some of them were nearly new, only a scratch as fine as hair on them. Only the best for Sasha.

He worked feverishly, cleaning, polishing, and fitting each piece snugly against each other. He lost track of the hours, but that didn't matter. All that mattered was Sasha, and Sasha being whole again.

At last, the minigun began to take shape. The barrels. The chambers. He nearly choked on the hope that he desperately felt, but he could not hope. What if…?

No, the thought was too terrible to finish.

The unfeeling, indifferent sun had set and risen as if it didn't know that what he was doing, reviving Sasha, was the most important thing to have happened since the creation of the earth. Nay, the universe.

She was the universe.

When he had done all that he could, he willed himself to pick up new Sasha. She was the subtle perfection she had always been – still beautiful even when scarred with experience. His spirits rose. But was she capable of being used? Would she ever again join him in dubious battle?

Trembling, he tentatively took her by her handles, and revved her up.

She roared to life! Her barrels spun and whirred, as lively as they ever were. His heart was whole again.

Overcome with joy, he didn't know whether to laugh, or weep, or simply luxuriate in the glorious sound of Sasha singing to him again, so he did all three. He sang back to her. In his jubilation, he tossed her up to the ceiling, arms outstretched expectantly to catch her again.

She smashed into the ceiling and was deflected onto the hard linoleum.

Once again, she lay in pieces.

But Heavy knew how to fix her now.

~DA END~

Are you still here?

What?

Okay.

I know, I know, proper self-deprecation must walk the fine line (or in my case, jam my foot up its business and muss it all up) between genuine self-critique and blatant like-fishing, but just to be clear, what I'm _actually_ doing is insulting everybody's taste in literature. (;P) But still. Thank you for sticking around.


	8. Spy's Espionage

Author's Notations:

(Someone said they didn't like the author's notes (or possibly Administrator's Noticeboards), so I'll try to keep this short.)

My laptop's ground pin broke and it couldn't charge, which filled me with unspeakable rage. I was inconvenienced greatly and unable to access many of my beautiful documents. Then school began.

(Well, that didn't work.)

Last chapter, I don't think I stretched the limits of ridiculousness enough. I am going to go even further. I'm bringing in the big metafictional guns. Irrelevant linguistics, borderline offensive content, wonky old game mechanics…What more could you want? (Besides no a/n. Sorry, AlithiaSigma, I couldn't help myself...)

P.S. J'adore les papillons.

* * *

Spy's Espionage

The weeks had been dragging on. The latest setback in interteam relations meant that even getting people to come to the meetings to strategize before missions was now like pulling teeth. Tiger teeth. From a living tiger. In a conservation zone patrolled by hard-boiled park rangers with nothing to lose. The Engineers had enacted a non-optional two-way interaction ban between the Soldiers, and by that I mean they tied them up in their respective bases. That had worked up until the Soldiers chewed their way out and blew up the meeting room.

Back to the two-team model it was. For now, at least. Until the Engineers could make stronger, preferably cyanide-laced rope.

Spy thought himself above all this rancor; he never took anything on the battlefield personally. Certainly, he could appreciate his handiwork, but he never stooped to the petty rivalry that the Soldiers had, for example, nor did he use childish insults like the Scouts. Spy was a sophisticated killer, ruthless and disciplined, as collected and cool on the field and off as a widely cultivated plant by the binomial name of Cucumis sativus.

But little did he know, there was another.

The "Mentlegen".

The Mentlegen was the third cousin twice removed or something of someone somewhere. For some reason, on lovely day when Spy was out gathering intelligence on the robot advances, this third cousin twice removed or something of someone somewhere took it upon himself to infiltrate Mann Co. by getting himself hired as a mercenary. (Actually, he didn't succeed in getting hired, but bore such a striking resemblance to the former-BLU Spy that they let him pass. Also, he wouldn't stop smoking as many cigars as he could fit in his mouth, and they were beginning to forget what fresh air smelled like.) On his business card, which was actually a list entitled "favorite butterfly things", he had the following:

· the butterfly knifes

· the butterfly doors

· the butterfly strokes

· the butterfly effect

· the butterfly graph

· the butterfly guard

· the butterfly joints

· the iron butterfly investment strategy

· breaking a butterfly upon a wheel

· butter does not fly

At the bottom, "I 3 Buterflys" was inscribed in an elegant, practiced cursive.

He entered the room, greeting everyone with a smooth "Mentlegen". He casually took out an entire pack of cigarettes, jamming them into his mouth.

Engineer coughed politely. "D'ya need any help with that, sir?"

"Muiaiguh," replied the Mentlegen. He removed the pack of cigarettes from his mouth, strings of saliva hanging off of it. He shook the cigarettes onto his palm, and promptly shoved those into his face, deftly lighting them with a blowtorch he had produced from nowhere – at least nowhere the mercs wanted to think about.

"I guess not," muttered Engineer.

"Ah ahm heeah to bee ze Sphee," said the Mentlegen.

"What?"

The Mentlegen produced a flyer, which had a picture of a plate of indeterminate pasta on it. He flipped it over, and that side was graced with the image of another, slightly less indeterminate plate of pasta.

"Huh," remarked the Engineer. "I didn't know the BLU Spy left on a secret mission. Heck, I didn't know any of us could leave. Just out of curiousity, how would one be able to apply for a secret mission?"  
And now, one may ask, how did he extract any pertinent information at all from a plate of slightly-less-indeterminate pasta? He was of course deciphering the lines of spaghetti code hidden in the looping, sauce-filled arms of the intertwined barbine. The BLU Spy was clearly a closet WET ("write everything twice", "we enjoy typing" or "waste everyone's time") programmer.

The Mentlegen smiled. This made the cigarettes slither out of his mouth like small, soggy brown legless lizards. (I say legless lizards because they generally have no venom and therefore cannot take their vengeance upon me in the way a venomous snake might if offended by this insensitive simile.) His speech became more clear, but he was still affecting a most outrageous accent.

"Akchually, that was a, how you say, cover-up. 'e ran off, presumably to find a female of the spheecies with great tracts of land and a sizeable inheritance with whom ' can discuss worldly matters and stimulating intellectual topics."

"Yeah...intellectual topics," muttered the Scout. The Engineer elbowed him. Scout scowled briefly at the Engineer, and turned to the Mentlegen, raising his voice again. "So...you're the replacement?"  
"But of course! I am here to be his replacement so the aitch queue does not find out that he ran off, presumably to find a f -"

"Yeah, yeah, we got that. But why?"

"I 'ave always wanted to be a spy!" proclaimed the Mentlegen. "I 'ave 'ad some success in my current career as a professional cat burglar, bird watcher and assassin but I would be honoured to join you fine people and hone my skills."

"You're a bird assassin?!" exclaimed Medic, a look of horror on his face.  
"No, I am a people assassin," reassured the Mentlegen. "Pardon my English; it is not my mother tongue. I should 'ave put a comma of the Oxford variety in that list of three or more items to avoid ambiguity."

"Oh. Gut."

"Well...how many people have you killed?"  
"Scout!"  
"What? We have to know if he sucks!"

The Mentlegen smiled enigmatically, took a fountain pen out of his secret right sleeve pocket, uncapped it and used the cap to scratch a number into the wall. After he finished, he added helpful diagrams explaining each job. It took him about four hours.  
"That's...a lot of zeroes. And, um, very...detailed...drawings."

"So? May I join you?"  
"I suppose..." said Engineer hesitantly, trying to pass off his hesitation as his natural drawl. "You know we'll be fighting robots, right?"

"Yes."  
"And you know those robots are pretty mean mother hubbards, right?"  
"I 'ave no idea what that charmingly colloquial americanism means, but I will nod in assent regardless."

"You don't care?"  
"Mon ami, or should I say mon soon-to-be ami, I am not in the least bit scared."

"Alllllriiight then..." said the Engineer, again exploiting his Texan heritage to avoid social awkwardness. "You can join us for one day. If you can keep up, you can stay." Disappointingly, Engineer didn't finish his hedging with another couplet, adding, "It couldn't hurt."

The Mentlegen beamed. "You will not be disappointed!"

* * *

Incidentally, the Mentlegen was perfectly correct. Engineer found him to be a competent, if a bit eccentric, sentry guarder and sneak attacker. Both teams concurred – since he was neither former-RED or former-BLU, no ill will had been bred between any of them. He quickly struck up a camaraderie with all the mercenaries, winning them over with his quirky humour and obvious talent for cramming of entire cigarette cases into his mouth.

Well, all the mercenaries except one.

The (former) RED Spy.

"He is a disgrace to spies everywhere!" stammered the RED(-faced) Spy. "Look at his pinstripes!"  
"Eh, you're wearing pinstripes," pointed out the Demoman.

"But my stripes are slate-on-redwood in colour! His are silver-on-cobalt!"

The Demoman stared at him for a moment, then averted his single eye, muttering about them needing a proctologist to remove the stick up Spy's rear end.

"It appears that my pistol is out of ammunition," declared the Mentlegen, a few hammer uni – uh, feet away. He slapped it against his face, somehow managing to exchange the magazine for a fresh one with. "Perfect," he spluttered, the gun still plastered against his face.

Spy facepalmed.

The robot nearest to them merrily decided to explode, sending the Mentlegen, Engineer and Spy to respawn.

* * *

In the respawn room

"Why, for the love of all that is holy, did you allow this menace to join us?"  
"He's a good mercenary," argued the Engineer. "He's gettin' along real good with everyone on both teams."  
"Yes, I am most good amis with them," said the Mentlegen. "They say I make them laugh."

"I bet you do," said the Spy.

"He speaks French," said the Engineer.

"Baguette," supplied the Mentlegen.

"That hardly qualifies as 'speaking French'," snapped the Spy.

"Baguette fromage?"

Spy snorted in disgust. "Salaud."

"Hein, me laissez-moi tranquille!"

"Vas-t'en, chercher ton tétine!"

The Medic gasped. "He tutoyed him! He tutoyed him! Not only has he told him to get his pacifier, thus infantilizing him, he used the familiar tu instead of vous"

Coincidentally, tutoy meant, among other things, "baby bottle". If anything, the conversation was perfectly on track.

"Je n'utilise pas les suçons!"

"Suçons? You mean sucettes?"

"What is the difference?"

"Well, in France, suçon could mean either hickey or lollipop. In Quebec, sucette can mean either hickey or lollipop. Or something. It's one or the other."

"That's Canadian French. That isn't real French."

Somewhere up north in the land of snow moose, poutine igloos and the occasional maple tree (as well as self-deprecating stereotype use), thousands of French Canadians felt a wave of indignation course through their veins and arteries and even capillaries.

"Shtop persecuting me!" yelled the Mentlegen.

"Oh no, we have a social justice warrior here," the Spy spat, flippantly using a neologism not coined until the 21st century.

"At least he is warrior," said the Heavy. The Heavy was there because of a mishap with Sasha – a robot appeared to reach out for her, so Heavy quickly threw her down and jumped on top of her to protect her. It didn't quite work.

"He has a point, too," said the Engineer. "It does no one any good to discriminate against different national varieties of languages."

The Spy stared at them in shock. His eyes narrowed. "Are you...siding with him?"

The Engineer shuffled back and forth. "Uhm...jus' sayin', Spah, you might have been a little harsh there -"

Spy abruptly turned around, hurled a balisong into the window, and left the room.

While they waited for the glass to stop tinkling, the Mentlegen asked, "Why is he like that?"

"He is an Arschloch," replied the Medic, who had just respawned, cheerfully. He was there because the former-BLU Soldier had mistaken him for a communist, and BLU rockets were still effective against former-REDs.

"An Arschloch," repeated the Mentlegen thoughtfully.

"Ja. Don't think too much of it."

Little did Medic know, he had meddled with forces beyond his ken.

* * *

The Mentlegen showed up at dinner without his customary fifty cigarettes, dressed in a slate-on-redwood coloured pinstripe suit. The Soldier was the first to notice.  
"What the cussing cuss word? Do we have two RED Spies or have I finally lost my mind?"  
"That ship sailed a long time ago, old man," retorted the Mentlegen.

"Well...French is weird!"  
"Hey! That's culturally insensitive!" said the Scout.

"Since when do you care, you prepubescent whelp?"

"Screwez-vous, vous dirtbag," said the Scout in a bad Chinese accent for some reason.

"You managed to overgeneralize a grammatical rule and misuse it within seconds of each other. Congratulations, Scout, you've hit a new intellectual low. Impressively incompetent, even for you."

"Shut up," said the Scout, angrily reverting his accent to one less offensive to Asian-Americans of Chinese descent.

"Are you going to cry, little baby?" the Mentlegen said in a mock sing-song.

"No," said the Scout, unconvincingly.

"Alright, that's enough," interrupted the Engineer.

"No, let him go on," said the Spy. I want to hear what he has to say."

"Mit Kanonen auf Spatzen schießen," said the Medic, in an attempt to sound wise.

"You know what you all are? Pathetic worms enslaved to your limbic systems, desperate for another dopamine fix. Your combined IQ is lower than the freezing point of helium. One day, you will all die and rot away, and not a single second of your worthless existence would have mattered."

"Don't reify that concept! IQ is but a measure of a certain -" began the Engineer, completely ignoring the overdone existential discussion.

"Hey! I take offense to that! I'm not a dope!" the Scout protested.

"No, you idiot, that's not what he said!" the Medic replied, exasperated.

"Who are you calling an idiot? He called you all idiots and you're going after me?"

"Well, yer an easy target," said the Demoman.

"Hey!"

"You know I'm right."

The Pyro, who had been hiding under their chair for a few minutes, set fire to the tablecloth in an attempt to catch their attention, to no avail.

The table erupted into discordant shouts and impromptu fisticuffs. The Mentlegen had been a very successful agent provocateur.

The Spy looked approvingly at the proceedings, until he was yanked aside by an irate Sniper.

"Oi! What have ya done to them?"  
"I did nothing. It was the Mentlegen – "

"Well, if you weren't such a jealous drongo, he wouldn't be acting like this!"  
"I am not jealous!" scoffed the Spy.

"Well, then you're envious! We like him better than we like you, and you can't stand that! That's not jealousy, that's envy right there!"  
"There's a difference?" asked a flummoxed Soldier, who had paused nearby in his punching in of Scout's head.

"Yes. Jealousy is when your possession of a good is threatened by a third party, while envy implies that you wish to possess a third party's good, something you do not have."  
"How educational!" remarked the Medic, before roundhouse kicking the bewildered Pyro, who really just wished they'd stayed in bed.  
Spy considered Sniper's words. He was reluctantly convinced that his priding himself on his impartiality was premature – he had initiated a petty rivalry with the innocent Mentlegen, and infected the entire team with the pettiness.

Suddenly ashamed, but still not yet willing to admit it, he sighed. The only way to somewhat reclaim what little dignity left of the situation was to tell the Mentlegen he was wrong in the most obfuscated way possible.

He approached the Mentlegen. "I would like to offer an explanation for my actions earlier. I perhaps gave the impression that I disliked your personality. That is absolutely true. But what I abhor more is when people modify their behaviour to pander to certain people." He paused. "Do you understand what I am saying?"  
"Why aren't you speaking in French? I know French."  
"Parce que tu es – " began the Spy. He stopped himself. He decided to switch to a more direct approach. "Apologies. I was wrong. Now apologize to them and fix this."  
"You weren't wrong. This is far more fun. Toying with the emotions of -"  
"No, you nitwit, I was wrong! I was envious of your instant fellowship with those I had to gain the respect of. You may not have my looks or my air of breeding, but you managed to befriend both Soldiers. That is a feat I will never achieve in my lifetime."  
The Mentlegen eyed him carefully. "Do you mean what you say?"  
The Spy considered denying it. "Yes."

The Mentlegen smiled, tore off the red suit to reveal a blue one, and spun Sniper around in joy.

"I feel as light as air!" sang the Mentlegen.

"How heavy is air?" asked the Demoman, who had stopped trying to hit Engineer with his Eyelander.

"Well, assuming 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon and 0.1% miscellaneous gases, we can calculate roughly by mass –" began the Engineer.

"Blah, blah, science, blah. I was just using a simile."

Just then, the BLU Spy walked in.  
"What are you doing back? It's hardly been a day!" exclaimed the Mentlegen.  
"It felt more like months of inactivity," said the BLU Spy. "The outside world is boring. I'd like to take my place back, please."

Everyone, having forgotten what they were all worked up about anyway, got up to send the Mentlegen off.

"Even though we only knew you for eight baffling hours, it's like you were a part of our family," said the Engineer.

"I like French people better now," said the Scout.  
"Come back to visit anytime!" said the Medic.

The Mentlegen shook all their hands warmly, his eyes twinkling. "Au revoir, mes amis. Sucette bonbon."

~~C'est la fin~~

Stray thought: I see "R&R" all the time. I assumed it meant "rate and review", but that would just be the review. I also considered "read and review", but to review a story one had better read it. So it might as well be "redundancy and a review".

I just hope you guys "R": "Respire". Please don't stop breathing.


	9. Scout's Scouting

Author's/N: I like all the classes. But some are fun to bash. Repeatedly. In the head. With scissors. Or bone saws. Mwahahahaha.

However, at this point, I really do not know what I am doing. I have included more (directly lifted) lines, this time from _Blackadder_. (There's something irresistible about britcoms.)

(P.S. Have you noticed that I've not marked this as complete yet? Ha! That is because I have yet another chapter to be locked and loaded and fired at your unsuspecting retinas! Prepare yourselves! You have been warned!

Actually, I'm posting them both at the same time, so I suppose you are sufficiently warned. :/)

* * *

 **Scout's Scouting**

Scout had been the runt of the litter his entire life: the smallest, weakest, and least consequential person in a group of people of already dubious consequentiality. Of course, that just meant he had to make up for it by being the loudest, most boisterous, and most skull-numbingly logorrheic nuisance to walk the Earth or at least New Mexican deserts. He was astoundingly good at that, much to the consternation of his fellow mercenaries.

Scout was vaguely aware of their discontent, but, obviously, they deserved it. They didn't respect him at all. It wasn't his fault that they couldn't appreciate his wit and genius. He could hear them now: "Hey! What's-yer-face! Get your stupid butt over here."

There it was again. Always calling him "stupid". He wasn't stupid. He just did, said, and thought stupid things. There was a _difference_.

Oh wait, that was the other Scout calling him. He ground his teeth and answered in his own belligerent manner. (For the reader's sake, their following exchange, consisting of a steady stream of profanities and slang terms, has been literalized.)

"All right, tough guy. Of course, I'm using that epithet in a most sarcastic manner, as it is clear that I am merely pointing out the lack of so-called toughness you possess by using it."

"Oh yeah? Well, I'll see your sarcastic epithet and raise you a dismissive and unapologetically vulgar reference to romancing your mother."

"I laugh at you because the Spies have already used that against me, making your feeble attempt at disrespect tired and unoriginal! I then insult you in an equally profane and unoriginal manner, since our dialogue is written by a talentless hack who can't be bothered to come up with something actually clever and in-character."

(The two Scouts were so similar in their diatribes that they may as well have renamed themselves Pot and Kettle and debated whether or not the other was really a Very Dark Gray. Unfortunately, no one wants to be stuck with the name "Pot", so that scenario never came to be.)

"What do you want?" the former-RED Scout finally shouted in exasperation after exhausting his store of obscene insults.

"There's someone at the door. Go get it."

The former-RED Scout spluttered indignantly, "Why don't you go get it yourself?"  
"Because I don't want to," the former-BLU said matter-of-factly. He darted off before his former-RED counterpart could reply.

Grumbling, he traipsed over to the door and yanked it open just so he could slam it closed on whatever schmuck was behind the disturbance. Before he could, he caught sight of whatever schmuck was behind the disturbance and was promptly gobsmacked into submission.

"Oh...Miss Pauling! What a...uh...a...terrific – coincidence?" (yes, that was the word) "...to see you here." He was immediately cheered by the fact that he had hit at least 46% of the words he had meant to say, and that was a passing score as far as he was concerned.

Although he had a rather graphic health education at the hands of his brothers and no trouble interacting with girls, his extent of his experience with "ladies" was his dealings with one heart-stopping Miss Pauling which, upon sight, rendered him weak at the jaw and elbows (not knees; he prided himself on having very strong knees).

Naturally, she didn't give him the time of day (or night, for that matter).

Miss Pauling stood there in her purple-toned, blood-spotted splendor, her jet-black hair in attractive disarray and her face adorably smeared with grime and sweat. She made a half-hearted attempt to force her tangled hair into a bun. It unraveled itself petulantly.  
"Yeah, uh huh, nice to see you too."

 _Quick, say something sofa- sofisic- sofistikated!_ he thought to himself. "What brings you to –"

"I need to lay low for a few days. I thought they'd never find me..."

"Miss Pauling, who's after you?"

She sighed and pushed her glasses up, but the smudged glass didn't hide the frenzied gleam in her eyes. "The Department of Labor."

Scout blinked. "...What."

"If they catch me, they'll force me...to go on vacation."  
"Oh, yeah, that sounds terrible. Miss Pauling, I think you might actually enjoy some time off –"  
"I don't have time to deal with that right now. I can't _not_ work, not even for a second."

"Aren't you technically not working now...?"  
She ignored him. "There's something big going on. Something...I can't tell you about. But it's definitely big."

Scout nodded, eyes wide.  
"I need you to hide me here for a few days. Give the team a head's-up first. If anyone from the Department shows up, say I'm on a safari."

He had, of course, tuned out by now and was staring at a freckle on her nose.

"Scout! Are you paying attention?"

"What? Oh. Yeah, I hear ya. You want me to give the Department heads a hiding and then go on a safari."

She sighed. "Close enough."

He beamed. "Say, Miss Pauling, can I just say how beautiful you are looking today –"

Unbeknownst to him, she had already pushed past him and was halfway down the hall.

The extremely awkward "date" they had after the bread incident consisted of him awkwardly being awkward – uh, suavely being charming – while Miss Pauling made some corpses out of some random people he couldn't remember. He had made absolutely no progress whatsoever–

Wait.

Last time, he had gotten her attention by messing with the briefcase. Granted, that didn't go perfectly, but it had gotten the job done.

Why was the briefcase so damn important anyway? It was definitely some sort of secret, but about what?

Maybe ...

Maybe he should find out.

Now, with the robots serving as a very effective distraction and the teams no longer (officially) at each others' throats, their briefcase was kept under minimum security. One was even destroyed in some freak kitchen fire. It would be easy, tantalizingly easy, just to take one, open it up, and look inside. And somehow he'd get another shot with Miss Pauling, although that seemed easier said than done.

His resolve solidified. Yes. He would take the briefcase, boast about taking the briefcase, then open the briefcase and read it.

He fell asleep, where his dreams were populated by scads of Miss Paulings.

Getting the briefcase was surprisingly less difficult than he had surmised. The last time, it had been behind triple-layered bullet-proof glass with laser-triggered alarms.

This time, it was lying behind a bucket in one of the spacier supply closets.

"Huh, I was really expecting this to be harder," he observed aloud. No one was around to hear him brag about it, so he simply addressed the various appliances in the supply closet. "Did you see that, mop? Stealin' intel's a piece of cake, spray bottle. Don't know why everyone makes a big deal..."

The mop fell over.

Since cleaning supplies did not make the best audience for his relating of the particulars of his daring feat, he decided to skip to the part where he opened and read the briefcase. Unfortunately, reading was not his strong suit. He, like half his teammates, was functionally illiterate. However, even he knew that anything written in big red letters meant business.

But business was boring, so he ignored it, even if a good understanding of current markets and industry disruption would be socially responsible, future-oriented, and synergistically recommendable. This meant most of the items in the briefcase went unread, since pretty much everything was written in big red letters.

The pictures were no better. They featured only old things – old ladies, old men, old cars, and some were so old they were portraits painted to a romantic ideal rather than as a true depiction of the idiosyncratic facial qualities of the person in question and therefore no use at all. Scout quickly came to the conclusion that it had been a waste of time walking stealthily into the supply closet, and his efforts were even more disappointed when Miss Pauling, coming to check on the briefcase, caught him with his hands metaphorically of a scarlet hue.

"Hey...Miss Pauling... didn't expect you to come here to this particular closet at this particular time. What a coinci–"

"You...you looked in the briefcase."  
"Yeah, but–"

"You opened the briefcase?! Do you know what you've done?"

"...no."

"Did you even think before you decided to look in it?!"

"Also no."

"No! You never do! You never think! Did you read anything in there?!"

He shook his head, mute with fear.

"Of course. I forgot, you're an idiot. Give that to me." She snatched the briefcase from him, carefully tucked in the loose papers, and marched off.

A single (manly) tear rolled (manfully) down his (masculine) face (in a most virile manner). (No, he's not ashamed of his sensitivity. Wherever did you get that idea?) That single tear was quickly joined by a multitude of other tears, but they were all very single.

After he had a good long cry, he assessed the situation. There was probably a way to salvage this mission. He went to the Panic Room – which was really a Mild Concern room at the moment – to draw up a new plan.

The Demoman wandered in, brandishing a bottle of brandy in one hand and his grenade launcher in the other. He belched by way of greeting, flanked by a wary Engineer.

"Boyo! Whassa matter with ye?" slurred the Demoman.

"Nothin'," lied the Scout. He thought with some irritation that it was getting rather tired of being mistaken for a teenager even though he was well into his twenties. He attempted once to grow a beard, failed miserably, and so decided that beards were lame anyway while sulking with a bowl of ice cream.

He was certain that this was the only reason Miss Pauling was still distant. He accidentally tried to hide the rough sketch of Miss Pauling he was making, which brought it to everyone's attention.

"Girl troubles, huh? Well, I've got some (*eructation*) advice for ye."

 _Uh oh_ , thought the Engineer.

"Women like men with large..."

"...vocabularies," interrupted the Engineer.

"...giant (*burp*), pulsating..."

"...brains..."

"...and if you could just get..."

"...your grades up..."

"...then she'd be _begging_ for..."

"...your company," the Engineer hurriedly finished. "Come along now, Demoman. I think the boy's heard enough."  
Spy stepped in to hear the conversation better.  
"I am simply here to acquire these files," he lied. "Proceed."

"Spy, do you think I have a chance with–"

"No."

"I didn't even finish my sentence."

"You didn't have to. You have a particular talent for using a great quantity of words to say absolutely nothing, so anything I said would have been appropriate."

"Thanks, man!"

"That was not a compliment."

"Anyway, you've given me an idea. I'll write her an apology letter! Yeah! That'll work."

He dashed out of the room.

"What is wrong with that boy?" Spy wondered aloud.

Demoman snored loudly in response.

"Never mind that," Engineer said. "We've just been talking to Miss Pauling, and, well, Scout's in trouble."

"Not a surprise. What did he do this time?"

"He looked in the briefcase."

Spy raised an eyebrow. "Well. That is serious."

"Yeah. So what are we gonna do about it?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Spy, you know what will happen if we don't fix this right quick."

"Yes, and that pathetic excuse of a teammate would've brought it on himself. Not my problem."

Engineer frowned. "If he's really that pathetic—"

"He is."

"Well, fine. Since he's so pathetic, why do you feel the need to point it out so often?"

"There's something about the fragility of glass that entices one to endeavour to shatter it through all means possible."

"Well, glass can be tough when tempered," Engineer said.

"Do you think we're setting up an analogy of some sort? Of painful self-improvement leading to greater strength?"

"Don't be stupid; of course we aren't."  
Engineer drummed his gloved fingers idly on the desk. _Well, if we were to just...adjust a few things on that personality of Scout's, it wouldn't be that bad, would it?_

A beat of silence later, Spy said, "Hypothetically, if we were..."

"Yes?" Engineer replied warily.

"Would the glass complain much?"

"Spy, we are not going to do that to him on purpose."  
"But it might make him _useful_."

The Engineer lowered his gaze. "Spy."

"Let's be honest. The Scout's a ridiculous goober. Why do we keep him around?"

"Haven't you learned your lesson from last time, Spy? It didn't go so well when you tried to get rid of Medic."

Spy grimaced. "That's different. Medic is—" he gave a slight cough "—truly indispensable. Scout is not."

"Well, he can run faster than all of us combined, jump over small skyscrapers, and he's an acceptable scapegoat for just about anything."

"But he's incredibly stupid."

"So's half our team."

They sat in silence for a bit.

"How could we replace him?"

"We could get a rocket-powered Siberian sprinting cheetah." Spy looked expectantly at Engineer.

"No."

"You're not a very good sport."

"Fine. Let's discuss the procedure with Medic." Engineer cleared his throat. "MEDIC!"

"Vat?! Vat is going on? Ve are not even in battle!" wailed the Medic from the other side of the base.

"WE WANT YOU TO DO A BRAIN TRANSPLANT!"

Medic appeared after a supernally short pause at the door, his lab coat splattered with formaldehyde and his hair in slightly more disarray than usual.

Engineer did a double-take. "You're not our Medic."

"Does it matter?" the former-BLU Medic asked.

"...I guess not."

"Wait! Wait! I'm on my way!" the former-RED Medic came running up, and stopped upon seeing the other Medic. "Ach, verdammt!"

The former-BLU Medic smirked. "I used a teleporter I specially requested from my Engineer."

"You win ... this time!" the former-RED Medic said between wheezes. "Oh, I need to do more aerobics."

The former-BLU Medic blew a raspberry at his retreating counterpart before addressing Engineer again. "So, did you say...?"

"Yes," said Engineer gravely. "We want you to perform the sub-arachnoid neocranio-neurointegrative procedure. Hopefully using a smarter brain than the candidate currently has."

A grin spread slowly across Medic's face. "Wunderbar. It's been so long since I've done one of zose...who is the lucky victim – I mean candidate?"

"It's the Scout. We just heard from a very angry Miss Pauling that he snooped in the briefcase. We have to destroy all memories of anything he may have seen, or he'll have to be neutralized."

"I can neuter whomever you want," Medic said.

"I said _neutralize_. As in kill."

"Yes, zat too," Medic said airily. "Come now. Bring ze boy in for examination. I have a delightful selection of ganglia from great thinkers, scientists..."

"Yeah, we haven't really told him yet."

"No matter, bring him in. I don't have a medical license anymore, vhich means informed consent is more of a general suggestion than a rule."

"Alright. Demo, go get 'im. Tell him that Miss Pauling wants to see him." Engineer thought for a moment. "Hmm. 'Want' is a bit of a strong word. Just say he has to direct himself to the general location that is Miss Pauling's current coordinates on this plane of reality."

Demo saluted sloppily, and weaved out of the Panic Room.

"I love unethical experimentation!" Medic exclaimed without any provocation.

"Okay, don't get too excited."

* * *

"This is a dangerous procedure and for it to succeed, you will have to cooperate fully," Medic explained for the third time to the Scout strapped down to the gurney.

The former-RED Scout did not doze off during this exchange. That would be a wholly unrealistic exaggeration. People do not fall asleep within seconds of hearing boring speech. He did, however, drift off in a sort of glazed-eyed reverie.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Wha? Yeah, of course."

"Then what did I just say?"

"Uhh..." he snapped his jaw shut angrily. "You...uh...I don't care."

"Ve are going to replace your brain with another brain. It will be a smarter brain than yours. You might die, but you also might live, so chin up."

Scout's stomach twisted in fear. Well, not literally. If it had literally twisted, it would probably necessitate surgery, and the thought of having surgery done by the doctors available to them would have been enough for his poor, hapless stomach to frantically untwist itself in fear.

"Uh...do I get a say in this?"

"Nope!" Medic replied cheerily, and hit him about the head with a frying pan.

The procedure itself did not last very long. Medic sawed open Scout's skull, yanked out the brain, and shoved the new one in, the Medi Gun healing its merry way throughout. The tricky part was waiting for the patient to wake up afterwards, which Medic found to be the greatest frustration of his career since it happened so infrequently. Medic thought it quite inconsiderate on the part of his patients to die so often. This time, however, he was rewarded with a relatively short wait, and he found the patient standing at the window staring into space when he returned after he changed into less blood-stained clothing.

"Ah! It was a success. Not a surprise, I'm vunderfull. But still, nice to see."

The Scout turned abruptly to face him. "Is there an ontologically independent, objective reality beyond our subjective experience of it? Or is it that all that can exist is a phenomenological reality?" he said in perfect Received Pronunciation.

Medic frowned. "Hmm, I've never considered that. Philosophical realism has always been my perspective of choice."

Engineer popped his head in. "Hey, doc. How's it g–"

"Is it truly our place to determine if something is moral or not? Is there, truly, a morality to speak of?" Scout bloviated.  
Engineer facepalmed. "Aw hell, you made him a moral nihilist?"

"Vell, at least he isn't a regular nihilist."

That was a mistake. In a voice that commanded attention, that swelled to the sweeping grand heights of passion and the low whispering valleys of prosodic emphasis, Scout began to pontificate. "Life has no meaning. All systems move towards entropy. The world will die flaming. PV=nRT."

"Not _all_ systems – are you a naive empiricist?"

Spy cleared his throat from the doorway.

"May I just interrupt?" He turned to Scout. "Can you recite the first hundred digits of pi?"  
The Scout swelled pompously. "Certainly. 3.1415..."

"Hmm. It seems like his conversation has even less substance than before. Odd." Spy turned back to Medic. "This is not better.

"Was there something wrong with the brain you used?" asked the Engineer.  
"Nothing. Nothing at all. I made sure that it was fully compatible for once. The previous owner was shot to death, and its current owner has been shot to death many times. The previous owner had a degree in the liberal arts, and its current owner also won't amount to any academic success."

"Medic, I have 11 hard science PhDs, but I don't feel the need to demean other peoples' degrees. What was it in?"

"Philosophy."  
"Oh. Never mind, then."  
"Were there any communicable diseases that may have affected the organ?" Spy inquired.

"No! Wait. Yes, he had rabies. Oh, so _zat_ 's why zay shot him."

"We have to fix this!" Engineer exclaimed.  
"Well, he is smarter, and he doesn't have any incriminating memories," Medic said in a cajoling tone.

"But we have to put up with this!" Engineer waved at the Scout, who had reached "510582097494459".  
"That is a very good argument, I'll give you zat. But we'll have to stick with zis until I can figure out the reverse procedure."

"Just shove his old brain back in!"

"It's not that simple!" Medic shouted. "Once you have severed the brain stem once, severing it again is very dangerous! It simply rejects any new tissue! Rejects it, I say!"

"Fine, we'll try it! But Solly spotted another wave of bots earlier, so he'd better be able to fight them!"

He was not able to fight them.

"I am on a quest for knowledge!" Scout declaimed while standing on a pile of metal robot parts, in clear view of a robo-Sniper.

"No, you are on a quest for bullets!" screamed one of the Engineers.

"Pain is an illusion!" Scout shouted, now bleeding from multiple newly formed orifices.

"Haha! I like this new brain of yours, son!" yelled the former-RED Soldier as he careened past with his Rocket Jumper.

Medic hauled the still-pontificating Scout from off the pile of scrap metal and turned the Medi Gun on him. "Vat are you doing? You're supposed to _shoot_ the robots!"  
"Yes, but will that really bring true fulfillment?"

"No, but it vill bring TEMPORARY IMMUNITY FROM DEATH BY MY HAND!"

He was silent for a moment, and then pronounced the words: " _Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur_."

"That doesn't even– You know vat? I vill go shoot the robots. You use the Medi Gun."

That didn't work either.

* * *

"Alright, that didn't work," Engineer said. He, Spy, Demo, and Medic stood in the more-aptly-named Panic Room.

"So...how can we get rid of those pesky memories in there?" asked Engineer in disgust as Medic prodded the jelly-like organ with delight.

Medic shrugged. "Electrocute it?"  
"Would that not destroy it?" Spy asked.  
"You zink zat would make a difference?"

"A little bit, yeah," Engineer said.

A new voice came from the doorway. "What is going on here?"

"Ah! Miss Pauling!" Medic said, tittering nervously. "Ve, ah..."

She stared at the brain Medic was holding. "Oh...you didn't kill that messenger, did you? I told you he was on our side–"

"No, this is the Scout's. See, it's far less complex than your usual human brain."

"What?! Guys, I told you I'll use the neuralyzer on him!"

"Oh, so _that's_ what you said," Demo burped.

"Yes, indeed," the Scout said, sweeping into the room behind her. "I've heard everything."

Medic gulped.

"I will not hold it against you."

"What? Why?"

"Although this procedure was medically unnecessary, it was done in good faith, and I cannot fault that," Scout explained. "Besides, I have had such insights into the world that I would have never come to with that thing." He pointed to the wobbly mass of gray matter in Medic's hands.

With a flourish and a bow, he turned to Miss Pauling. "Miss Pauling. You are the asymptote to my rational function. I understand now that I can approach you, but I'll never quite reach you."

"Unless you go on long enough so delta y is negligible," muttered the Engineer under his breath.

"I apologize for my boorish and unacceptable behaviour. I was bluff and crass and unbelievably thick and gittish. Can you forgive me?"

"Sure, whatever," said Miss Pauling.

"And other Scout!" The other Scout had been skulking about outside, eavesdropping on the conversation much as Spy did earlier.

"I have a name," the former-BLU Scout said huffily.

"Yes, and by another you would smell as sweet. Well, you are forgiven in your tresspasses against me. Our earlier exchanges, I've been informed, were churlish and juvenile."

"Yeah, whatever," the other Scout said, a little spooked and partly entranced by the accent. "I'll ... uh ... go look at a dictionary." He dashed away.

"Yeah, it seems I vill have to put the old brain in regardless. The rabies would probably kill him in a few months. On the bright side, I realized that the reverse procedure is exactly like the forward procedure. Brain stems don't reject tissue, right temporal junctions do. Silly me."

"Wait, do I have any input in this deci–"

"Nope," Medic said quickly, walloping him in the head with a bone saw.

* * *

Scout slowly opened his eyes, wincing at the brightness. He had a splitting headache for some reason and he couldn't remember why.  
A voice floated down to him, then smacked him in the cochlea.

"How are you feeling?"  
"Awful."  
"You _are_ awful."  
"What?"  
"Vat?"

"Anyvay, it should all be fine. I replaced all your organs, blah blah blah, you should be fine in a day or so. Shame."

"Why'd you replace all my–"  
"Rabies. Shut it."

"How did you get those organs on such a short notice?" a voice that sounded like Engie asked suspiciously. "Aw, hell. Did you steal them from some poor bastard? Or did you just buy them?"

"Ze illegal organ trade? That's lucrative. I mean ludicrous." Medic laughed nervously. "Silly me und my English slip-ups."

"Your English is _perfectly fine_ ," the Engineer said, trying to make it sound like an accusation.

"I obtain all my organs in a most definitely legitimate manner. Besides, the sale of organs is legal in Iran ... not that I do business there or anything."

(The Medics were far too familiar with laws involving the sale and bartering of human organs for the Engineer's taste, but he was willing to overlook it if they fixed their messes.)

"Is he back to normal?" Miss Pauling asked.

"Um, hello, I'm right here."

"Probably not," said the Medic.

"Eh, good enough. I mean, he acts brainless most of the time anyway, so this is probably an improvement."

"Still right here," repeated the Scout.

"Yeah, okay. I'm sorry about that whole...brain replacement thing. I should've just told you about the whole policy we have about, you know, briefcase memory removal. The briefcases are more important than all your sorry lives, though, so if any of you touch one again I will end you.

"Will you go out with me?"

"Nope."

Scout wasn't too concerned. The status quo had been restored, as was his brain, and all was well.

Demo's voice broke the silence. "Gosh darn it, she's gone and erased all his character development!"

(As if there was any in the first place. Carry on.)


	10. Team Fortress 2 is Weird

Final Author's Note:

Well, I finally used a nearly normal author's note title. I am so ashamed of myself.

Alas, we have come to the end of a (not so epic) journey. I have been your written-filth-creator.

This is the final chapter of Team Fortress 2 is Weird, in which Team Fortress 2 will be weird, but no more or less weird than canon. (I just love Valve writers. Please don't sue me. #fairuselaws) Thanks again to all of you who managed to make it this far without leaving in utter disgust or boredom, and apologies to those who didn't. (This has honestly gone on for far too long.) If you dislike metafiction, I apologize in advance, humanity's subjective aesthetic values have struck again. (Not sure if I should mark this as crossover, but...nah.)

I've really nothing else to say besides thank you all for letting me infiltrate the world of TF2 through ridiculous fan fiction. Generic well wishes of utmost sincerity!

* * *

Featuring Merasmus, Saxton Hale, the Director, Miss Pauling, and original character, the Publicist/PR Manager!

* * *

 **Team Fortress 2 is Weird**

The nine classes from both teams lounged about in the lounge (rather redundantly, I might add).

"Well, what else are we to do?"

Shut up.

Miss Pauling, who was still hiding from the Department of Labor, had called them for an impromptu meeting.

"We hired a PR manager after the last debacle," said Miss Pauling.

"What debacle?"

"Honestly, I don't know anymore," Miss Pauling said, sighing. "I think this is about the time the Medics killed all those people for their organs? I'm not sure. Anyway, I want you guys to meet your new PR manager, the Publicist. He's going to help us defuse some of the ... um ... debacle-ness."

"Thank you, ma'am. It's good to meet you, gentlemen. I am the Publicist."

"We don't need a stinking peer manager!" yelled Soldier. "Everyone loves us!"

"But have you seen the player base for your game? It has..." the Publicist paused for rhetorical effect. "...dwindled."  
"What game?"  
"Mann Co. developed a game to showcase you and your work! Didn't they tell you?"

"Oh yeah. No, we didn't like that," Sniper said. "We felt it was trivializing our experiences as mercenaries."

"Really?"  
"Nah, we just couldn't negotiate Pyro's contract, so we gave it a copyright strike."

"But what about the fangirls?" fretted the Publicist. "They'll riot! They'll storm the base! They'll cut off locks of your hair as a souvenir! You'll all be BALD!" he declaimed emphatically, voice quivering with emotion.

"What about it?" the Engineer replied, a bit tersely. Heavy fixed his gaze, unwavering, on the Publicist.

"BALD?!" bellowed Soldier, glowering at the cowering PR manager. "Not a bad idea! In fact, I'll shave off the rest of my hair this instant!"

"Uh, Soldier–" Demoman said.

"Don't try and stop me, soldier!"

"I was just going to hand ye a razor..."

As Soldier took the razor from Demoman, Miss Pauling said, "You know, there's a bigger problem here. The fangirls have probably all gone to Overwatch."

Scout gasped. "You take that back!"

"Come on, people can like two or more things at a time," Engineer said.

Scout immediately brightened. "That's true! I think Immanuel Kant was a real pissant, but I also subscribe to the utilitarian overtones of..."

"Are you sure you put his brain back right?" Engie whispered to the Medic.

"Engineer, I am shocked. Are you suggesting I am incapable of carrying out my duties in a proper manner?"

"Yes," Engineer replied bluntly.

"Fine, I left some of the old brain in. Come on! Can you blame me?"

"But yeah, no one likes anyone better than us!" Scout cut back in. "I mean, look at us! Eh?" He spun around for inspection.

"I'm starting to understand less and less why people even liked any of you in the first place," the Publicist said.

"Come on! I mean, Over-what was that game again?"

"Here," said the Publicist. "Look for yourself."

"I don't see anything– wow, Tracer is way better-looking than me. And Widowmaker's better-looking than Snipes and Spy combined. And Mercy's way better-looking than–"  
"We get it!" Medic cried.

"Shush, they'll hear you!" the Publicist hissed.

"Who?"  
"The message boards on the– never mind, you don't need to know." The publicist hauled a gigantic brown briefcase bursting at the seams with folders onto the table.

"Wow," the Scout said, dumbfounded. "It's not blue or red. They even make briefcases that colour?"

"I have compiled a number of possible ways to improve your team's visibility and reputation management," said the Publicist. "One, release comic strips about your lives. Unfortunately, that takes a helluva long time and frankly it's a dying medium."

" _You're_ a dying medium!" yelled his cartoonist from the other room.

"That brings me to step two, release short films about your lives. Unfortunately, my colleague, the Director, has not been responding to the messages I sent him. So that leaves us three, writing short articles about your lives." The Publicist pulled out a notepad and pen, looking at them all expectantly.

"What are ye waiting for?" asked one of the Demomen.

"You have to talk to me," said the Publicist. "Tell me about yourselves. You know, who you are as a person, what you like to do, how many robots you can take down in an hour, how many innocent people you've slaughtered, so on and so forth."

"We already did that with your colleague," the Engineer said. "Besides, I think you're irrevocably biased as a journalist in this case."

The Publicist drew himself up. "Do you mean to impugn my impartiality, sir?"

"Yes. You've heard many rumours, I'm sure, and you've come in with certain expectations about us. Well, whatever they are, they ain't true."

"I don't really care if they're true or not. My job is to take whatever you say and put a positive spin on it. For example, I can say your immoral murderous vandalism sprees and blatant disregard for classical physics is done out of a healthy skepticism of dogmatic authoritarianism and a concern for the rising human population."

"I'm not sure that'll _improve_ their reputations," Miss Pauling said.

"Pfft. We're writing for Teufort, a town of lead-poisoned imbeciles. Of course it will."

"That's very hurtful, you know," the cartoonist called from the other room. "I'm friends with some of those lead-poisoned imbeciles."

"Either way, we're not playin' this game with you," Scout said. "But if you want to play D&D, I am _totally_ up for another game. Right, Miss Pauling?"

"Scout is partially correct. We are not marionettes to be paraded about the public for their amusement," Spy interrupted.

The Publicist sighed. "Maybe not, but if you want to stay relevant, you should be."

Before they could continue, the center of the lounge floor began to glow bright green and wisps of smoke curled up from the edges of the moth-eaten carpet. A howling chasm appeared in its place, as howling chasms were wont to do. It would be strange if one _didn't_ appear, in fact.

"IT IS I, MERASMUS!" the howling chasm announced. "OH WAIT, I HAVEN'T MANIFESTED PROPERLY. GIVE ME JUST – ONE – SECOND – YEOWCH! MAVERY! LET GO!"  
Heavy frowned. "Who is Mavery?"

"SHE'S MY PET CAT. SHE'S ADORABLE AND CUDDLY – OW! NOT THE FACE!"

Scout blinked. "Since when did you have a cat?"

"SHUT UP, JEREMY, IT'S BEEN LONELY SINCE TOM DIED!"

The Publicist adjusted his toupee. "Now, that's all very interesting, ma'am, but I have business with these men. Could you come back later?"

"SILENCE!" declaimed Merasmus, who had still not manifested properly. "FOOLS! Your petty squabbles are–"

"Hey, you think we could team up with those Ovalwretch people?" Scout asked. "Wouldn't that solve this whole mess."

"Ha! You thought you were rid of me?" Merasmus, who had finally hit the right wavelength to manifest, jumped up and down, trying in vain to get their attention. "You are just a bunch of baboons with brightly coloured hats! Mere mortals, you can never defeat the eldritch horror that is MERASMUS! I WILL DESTROY YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

"No, Overwatch is an organization aimed at promoting the public interest and ensuring the security of the planet. I don't think you'd qualify."

"FINE! I know how to destroy you all anyway." He floated to Soldier. "They've been lying to you. All of them. These cardboard cutouts of characters are not your friends."  
"How dare you accuse Salty Pete, Iron-Eye, and Pepper-Pot Pete of treason!" shouted Soldier.

"What? No, not the real cardboard cutouts–" Merasmus pointed a long, bony finger at the other eight classes. "Them!"

"I know they lie! They tell themselves every day they aren't ugly as–"

"NO!" screeched Merasmus. "I mean they are not from where they say they are! Half of them aren't even American." He jabbed his index frantically at Sniper, Medic, and Pyro. "He's from New Zealand! He's from Germany! And I don't even know what that thing is!"

"Medic's not German," scoffed the Scout. "He's from some place called 'Doucheland'."

"Deutschland," Medic corrected before he could help himself.

"That's what I said. Doucheland."

"IT SOUNDS _NOTHING_ LIKE THAT!"

Engineer had to restrain Medic, who was brandishing a Blutsauger and screeching " _He's doing it on purpose_!"

"Demoman says he's Scottish all the time..." babbled Merasmus.

"That just means he likes to drink scotch," scoffed the Soldier. "Hell, it's not beer, but it's good enough."

"That is true," belched Demoman.

"I can confirm," the former-RED Medic said. "I've stopped measuring the percentage of alcohol in his blood; I find it far more practical to measure the percentage of blood in his alcohol."

"Heavy is from Siberia, _you found him there_! He also has a PhD in Russian literature, whatever that is."

"That is clearly just a part of a mission to infiltrate the enemy from within!"

"I AM CONFUSED BY SUBPLOT!" bellowed one of the Heavys.

"Heavy! Did you just use a first-person pronoun?" Miss Pauling cried in joy. "Oh wait, no, he's just a Spy. A bad one at that. Oops."

The former-RED Spy rolled his eyes and elbowed the "Heavy".

"I dunnae think we even have a subplot," said the Demoman. "What are ye going on about?"

The former-BLU Spy brushed himself off. "I simply borrowed the girth of the Heavy to get your attention," he sniffed haughtily. "What are we even discussing anymore? Is it really about whether we should capitulate to the whims of the masses, or are we just prolonging the inevitable realization that we aren't really relevant?"  
"Oh, you all are _very_ marketable," said the Publicist. "Potentially even relevant. Just not right now, because you're all being uncooperative pains in my–"

"ARE NONE OF YOU PAYING ANY HEED TO MERASMUS?" Merasmus bellowed in frustration.

"Ma'am, I'll need you to keep your voice down," Miss Pauling said irritably. "And please speak in the first person; you're coming off as very obnoxious."

Merasmus (quite literally) exploded in frustration. "YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS. AND I DON'T TAKE CREDIT _OR_ DEBIT. SOULS ONLY. YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS WITH YOUR _SOULS!_ " With that, the howling chasm collapsed into itself with a _schlorp_ , leaving the carpet slightly more worn than before.

"You know, Frenchie makes a good point," the former-BLU Scout (who was still covered in wizard-ash) said, earning him a glare from the Frenchman in question. "We've made less and less sense with every update...what even happened in this last chapter of our lives? Nothing? Yeah, nothing! It was basically all filler!"

"That is true," mused Heavy (a real one this time). "But last time something happen, Sascha break. I think this 'filler' is better."

"But this is entirely substanceless! What is the use in getting up every day to go through the same empty motions, especially if it would be for some unseen, fickle audience that cares not about our well-being beyond their own selfish interests?" the other Scout chimed in.

"Do you seriously believe that your existence has been contrived for the amusement of an unseen audience?" Miss Pauling asked in exasperation.

"No, but my fictional game-self was! Wait, I've confused myself."

"I hardly think the life of your virtual incarnation is relevant to this discussion," said the Publicist tiredly.

"Wait, was this jus' a team-building exercise in disguise?" Sniper asked in disgust.

"No! This is me trying to make you _interesting_ and _palatable_ to an audience. I am _trying_ to find something positive – _anything_ positive – to report about you, but you won't _give me anything_. All I have is that you get accosted by annoying wizards and argue about nationality! Why do you even tolerate each other?! How can you even stand living with yourselves?"

The room went silent, except for the sounds of a pianoforte in the other room. The cartoonist, no doubt, had bored of eavesdropping on their conversations.

The former-RED Scout said, as the orchestral strains of the diminutive instrument reached a miniature crescendo. "You know what, you're right, new guy. We may live a life of meaninglessness, but that just means we have the duty to find meaning in our lives for ourselves. We may have made no sense at all, but at least we made no sense together. As a team. _More platitudes and truisms._ And that's why we tolerate each other. Because in this messy world of chaos and uncertainty, the only certainty we have is seeing each others' ugly mugs every day, and getting ours punched in. Put _that_ in your article." With that, he sauntered out the room, tripping over the carpet to the solemn plinking of the pianoforte. The other mercs, after a momentary hesitation, moved to leave.

The Publicist tapped his pen against his blank notepad.

"You know, that's not half bad. I could begin with that."

"All right," Miss Pauling cut in. "I think that was a very productive session. We'll try again tomorrow. Let's try again tomorrow?"

She looked expectantly around the lounge room, which was now mostly empty.

"Alright, thanks for coming!" she called after them.

She sighed and flopped down on one of the chairs the Publicist pulled out for her, and picked some wizard-ash out of her hair. "I guess I should've just made up stories for you to tell."

"That would have been immensely preferable," agreed the Publicist, mopping his face with a handkerchief. "I think I'll have to defer all the writing to my interns and take the credit for it again to make up for the time we wasted today."

"Well, tell them to make it wacky. Like, so wacky that you almost can't believe it. Because I really don't want people to believe the stuff that goes on here."

"I've seen worse," said the Publicist dismissively. "By the way, how opposed are you to metafictional intertextuality? I personally treat the fourth wall as more of a obstruction than an often crucial component of fiction, and I'm really phoning this in."

"Yeah, go nuts."

"Should any of them achieve hypostasis?"

"Uh...no?"

"You have no idea what that is, do you? Never mind. Some people will never reach anagnorisis."

"Okay then," Miss Pauling said. "So, about your contract..."

"Oh, of course! Nine pieces for nine classes, and perhaps one to wrap it all up, yes? I can deliver them all within a month, if I use my interns."

"Yes, very good. My boss would like to discuss the details of payment with you within the next two months..."

"Ah! In person? How magnanimous of her."

"Yes," she said, discreetly running a finger over her new pistol. "When the time comes, could you actually meet me in front of those abandoned mines? You know the ones. The Administrator likes to record her business deals, and apparently the acoustics there are incomparable..."


End file.
